Pepper Coast Mag has announced that submissions are now open for the 2025 Kofi Awoonor Poetry Prize. Entries will be accepted until August 8, 2025, at 11:59 PM (your local time).

This year’s prize will be judged by Nigerian poet Maryhilda Obasiota Ibe, whose impressive accolades include the 2025 Indiana Review Poetry Prize and the 2024 American Literary Review Poetry Prize. Ibe, an MFA graduate from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, is currently the 2025–2026 Hoffman-Halls Emerging Artist Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing.

The Kofi Awoonor Poetry Prize was founded to honor the legacy of the late Ghanaian poet, writer, and academic Professor Kofi Awoonor. Professor Awoonor, known for his powerful poetry, prose, and nonfiction, was the recipient of several prestigious awards before his untimely death in 2013.

The prize is hosted by Pepper Coast Mag, a literary platform committed to amplifying young, bold voices from Liberia and beyond.

You can read the 2024 Winning Poem by Iyanuoluwa Adenle selected by the inaugural judge for the prize, Othuke Umukoro.

Submission Guidelines:

1. The Prize is open to writers anywhere in the world. ONE unpublished poem per submission. Please, no multiple submissions by the same writer.
2. Please do not submit any poem that has previously appeared in a chapbook, an anthology, a full-length collection, social media, or any literary magazine.
3. The submitted poem should not exceed 50 lines. Epigraphs and the poem’s title are not part of the line count.
4. Submissions must not include identifying information; please do not include your name or biographical information in your submission document. Include the following ONLY in the body of the email: Name, Phone number, Email, and Country of Residence. Please send your submission as a PDF or Word doc attachment to: [email protected], and with the subject: Kofi Awoonor Poetry Prize 2025
5. Any submission that does not follow these guidelines or is received after the deadline will be discarded unread.
6. Close friends, family members, and recent students of the judge are not eligible for this prize.
7. No entry fee is required.
8. The administrators of Pepper Coast Mag will collate the submissions and forward them to the judge, who will read ALL submissions anonymously.
9. The judge’s decision is final.
10. The winner will receive $150 plus publication in Pepper Coast Mag.
11. The finalists will be announced in October, and the winner will be announced in November 2025.

If you have any questions, please email [email protected]. Review the full guidelines prior to submitting.