Nigerian writer Olufunke Grace Bankole has been awarded the John C. Zacharis First Book Award for her debut novel The Edge of Water (Tin House, 2025). The $1,500 award, presented by Ploughshares, honors the best debut book by a Ploughshares writer and alternates annually between poetry and fiction.

When asked about her audience, Bankole explained her vision: “For The Edge of Water I had an audience in mind: lovers of African literature—quite broad, I realize! These days I tend to think about my audience as a reader who wants to know more about these particular characters living interesting lives. And this reader may or may not be familiar with the culture and place these characters inhabit—but that doesn’t matter because this reader loves stories, cares about language, and is eager for wherever the journey might lead.”

This year’s judge, Jamil Jan Kochai, praised the novel as a multigenerational epic spanning decades and continents, noting that the intimacy of its details and characterization set it apart. The book, winner of the Westport Prize for Literature, has been named a Best Book by Oprah Daily and Apple Books. Bankole, a Harvard Law School graduate whose work has appeared in Glimmer Train, AGNI, and Michigan Quarterly Review, won the Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers and has received honors from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Rona Jaffe Foundation. The Edge of Water follows Amina’s journey from Ibadan, Nigeria to New Orleans through multiple narrators including family members and Yoruba deities, employing cowrie-shell divination, the epistolary form, and multiple timelines to reflect the layered complexity of the characters’ worlds.

The full interview with Olufunke Grace Bankole about her writing process, the development of The Edge of Water, and what inspires her work is available at Ploughshares.