Two African writers, Mubanga Kalimamukwento and Yalie Saweda Kamara, have been named finalists for the 2025 Firecracker Awards, which honor the best independently published books and literary magazines in the United States. If they win, Kalimamukwento and Kamara will split the $2,000 prize with the publishers of their books. The winner will be announced on June 26.

Kalimamukwento, who is a Zambian writer and attorney, is shortlisted in the fiction category for Obligations to the Wounded, a collection of short stories published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. The book explores the lives of women navigating migration, loss, and generational trauma, in Zambia and in diaspora.

Yalie Saweda Kamara, a Sierra Leonean-American poet and former Cincinnati Poet Laureate, is shortlisted in the poetry category for Besaydoo, published by Milkweed Editions. Kamara, who was also named a 2023 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow, draws on her roots in Sierra Leone and Oakland, California to craft poems that speak across cultures and generations.

The award is organized by the Community of Literary Magazines & Presses (CLMP), to honor “books that make a significant contribution to literary culture.”

Congratulations to both!