Nigerian poet Chisom Okafor new collection All I Know About a Heavy Heart Is How to Carry It will be published by Jacar Press in 2025. This collection has also been awarded the Jacar Press New Voices Award.

In praise of Okafor’s collection, Jaki Shelton Green, series editor for Jacar Press writes:

It is a celebrated revival of the absorbing language of an observant writer who raises and struggles with right questions that the heart requires answered. Chisom Okafor, from Nigeria, does not spoon-feed simplicity but poetically restores chaos and complexity as a universal way of seeing and writing that demands so much more but offers even more in return. This collection of poetry interrogrates what it means to be human and vulnerable through raw fierce and unflinching energy that sweeps the reader through unexpected passages and dislocations.

Chisom Okafor is a Nigerian poet, who has worked as a nutritionist, dietitian, bartender, accountant and night auditor, and is currently chabook editor for Liberetto Magazine. He was shortlisted for the Brittle Paper Award for Poetry in 2018 and the Gerald Kraak Prize in 2019. His work appears in the Indian Journal of Literature and Aesthetics, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, Palette Poetry, Frontier Poetry, SAND Journal, and more. He is presently studying for his MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Alabama, where he is a Graduate Council Fellow.

Congratulations, Chisom! We look forward to the published collection!