Jumoke Verissimo, who has been featured on Brittle Paper, is longlisted for the 2017 NLNG Prize for Literature.

The Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) Prize has announced its 2017 longlist of eleven poets, and it includes such well known names as Tanure Ojaide, Obari Gomba, and Jumoke Verissimo whom we’ve featured.

At $100,000, the NLNG Prize for Literature is the richest in Africa, and honours a published book of literature. It rotates among four genres: poetry, prose fiction, drama, children’s literature. 2017 is for poetry.

Here are the longlisted poets and collections.

  • ​Iconography, Peter Akinlabi​.
  • One Day I’ll Dare to Raise My Middle ​​​​​​Finger at the Stork and the Reaper, Hyginus Ekwuazi.​​​
  • For Every Homeland, Obari​​​ Gomba.
  • A Good Mourning, Ogaga Ifowodo.​​​
  • Garri for Breakfast, Seun Lari-Williams.
  • Echoes of Neglect, Humphrey Ogu.​​
  • Songs of Myself: Quartet, Tanure Ojaide.
  • The Heresiad, Ikeogu​​ Oke​.
  • Blood Streams in the Desert, Abubakar Othman. ​​
  • The Birth of Illusion, Jumoke Verissimo.​
  • ​Of Waters and the Wild, Ebi Yeibo.​​​​

The judges are: Tade Ipadeola, winner of the 2013 prize, which was the last prize for poetry, for his collection, The Sahara Testaments; Razinat Mohammed, associate professor of literature at the Universty of Maidugri; and the chair, Ernest Enenyonu, professor of Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint, USA.

The 2016 prize, for prose fiction, went to Abubakar Adam Ibrahim’s novel, Season of Crimson Blossoms.

The 2017 shortlist will be announced in September, and the winner in October.

Congratulations to the eleven poets.