"A limited edition, 11-piece box set that features 10 new African poets."
--New York Times Book Review, "Globetrotting," April 2019
Included in African Book Addict's List of 2019 Anticipated Releases
"Akashic's annual project to identify the best poetry written by African poets working today enters its fourth year with this limited edition box set that includes work by 10 poets."
--Publishers Weekly, Included in Spring 2019 Announcements / Poetry
Praise for the chapbook series:
"Dawes and Abani have taken on the vital project of publishing short collections by contemporary poets from Africa, packaged together in beautiful boxed sets."
--New York Times Magazine
"An ambitious, vital project that delivers exactly what it promises...As a group, the chapbooks dispel stereotypes about African writing. They also illustrate what editors Dawes and Abani note about that many ways poets can understand or redefine their ties to Africa. These insights are poignant and valuable, especially at a time when millions around the globe find themselves somewhere between new countries and ancestral lands they've left behind."
--Washington Post
"A collection pulsing with fresh talent in a series that poetry lovers worldwide should be grateful for."
--Shelf Awareness
The limited-edition box set is an annual project started in 2014 to ensure the publication of up to a dozen chapbooks by African poets through Akashic Books. The series seeks to identify the best poetry written by African poets working today, and it is especially interested in featuring poets who have not yet published their first full-length book of poetry.
The ten poets included in this box set are: Hiwot Adilow, Dalia Elhassan, Charity Hutete, Nour Kamel, Daisy Odey, Salawu Olajide, Musawenkosi Khanyile, Dina El Dessouky, Ama Asantewa Diaka, and 'Gbenga Adeoba.
About the Author:
Kwame Dawes is the Ghanian-born, award-winning author of twenty-one books of poetry and numerous other books of fiction, criticism, and essays. He has won Pushcart Prizes, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Emmy, and was the 2013 awardee of the Paul Engel Prize. He currently teaches at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Chris Abani, a Nigerian-born, award-winning poet and novelist, currently teaches at Northwestern University in Chicago. He is the recipient of a PEN USA Freedom-to-Write Award, a Prince Claus Award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a California Book Award, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a PEN Beyond Margins Award, a PEN/Hemingway Award, and a Guggenheim Award.
