Evaristo Prize for African Poetry is Currently Accepting Submissions for 2024/ How to Apply (Prize: $1500 USD)

The 2023-2024 Evaristo Prize for African Poetry is open! This competition is all about celebrating African poets and their creative works. If you’re an African poet, we highly encourage you to participate.

The Evaristo prize, formerly known as the Brunel International African Poetry Prize (BIAPP), was founded by British writer Bernardine Evaristo back in 2012. For a whole decade, she took the lead. Just last year, the African Poetry Book Fund took over the management of the prize. This organization is passionately dedicated to supporting poetry in Africa.

In the last competition, the contest  had two winners: Feranmi Ariyo from Nigeria and Gracia “Cianga” Mwamba from Congo/USA.

More so, Judging Panel for this year are: Gabeba Baderoon (Chair), Tjawangwa Dema, and Mahtem Shiferraw.

Eligibility

• If you’re African, whether you were born in Africa, are a citizen or resident of an African country, or have African parents, you’re eligible to participate.
• You can join if you haven’t published a whole book of poetry yet. Self-published poetry books are perfectly acceptable.
• They warmly welcome poems written in English. In the case where the winning work is a translation, we’ll also reward the translator.

Submission Guidelines 

• Your poems must be original and no longer than 40 lines each.
• It’s perfectly fine if your poems have been published or won awards before.
• Even if you’ve entered this competition previously, you can still submit new poems.
• Make sure your poems are in Times New Roman or Arial, size 12, single-spaced, with one poem on each page.
• Send all your poems in one document without including your personal info. Remember, you can’t change your poems after you submit them.
• Please use black ink only, no colors.
• To enter, simply use our Submittable platform.
• In the Submittable cover letter, kindly provide your name, nationality, country of birth, full address (including your permanent residence country), personal email, and phone number. Rest assured, this information remains private.
• Deadline for this contest is November 1, 2023.  Submit your poetry and be part of this wonderful celebration of African creativity.

Prize

• The Evaristo Prize for African Poetry awards USD $1,500 for ten poems written by an African poet.