The UnSerious Collective is pleased to announce its 2022 Fellows. Following the announcement of its longlist of 21 poets from 140 submissions from emerging Nigerian poets. Recall that the UnSerious Collective Fellowship is an annual fellowship that supports emerging Nigerian poets whose portfolios of poems emerge winners during the submission window. The prize seeks to continue to showcase bold, immediate, and limitless poetry. We are fascinated by the order of language and its possibilities, how Nigerian poetry is imagined and written, and what is written today by tomorrow’s face of African poetry.

As a collective, we strive to support a community that is driving towards creating a structure for the writing of its younger generation while also building an archive for the next set of readers.

Each fellow will receive the sum of N50,000.

• Njoku Nonso

Njoku Nonso is a Nigerian Igbo-born poet, essayist, writer of fiction, and medical student, who lives and writes in/from Ojoto as a tribute to the spirit of Christopher Okigbo. His works have been featured or are forthcoming in Rising Phoneix Review (Pushcart-nominated), Bodega Magazine, The Shore, Animal Heart Press, Palette Poetry, Brittle Paper, Kissing Dynamite, Praxis, and elsewhere. He’s currently working on his first poetry chapbook and still loving stray dogs. Hook up on Twitter @NN_Emmanuels.

• Haneefah Bello

Haneefah Bello is a poet and short story writer. She lives in Edo, Nigeria, and studies law at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, second place winner of the Akuko Lit competition, and winner of the Loft Books Short Story competition. Her works have appeared/are forthcoming in PoetryColumn NND, Praxis Magazine, Kissing Dynamite, Akuko and elsewhere.

• Olúwatamílọ́re Ọ̀shọ́

Olúwatamílọ́re Ọ̀shọ́ (Frontier XVII) is an emerging poet from Lagos, Nigeria. Her writings negotiate sensuality, familial dynamics, and identity. She tweets @Tamiilore_O.

• Jesuferanmi Lewis igbinigie

Igbinigie Jesuferanmi is Nigerian poet. He was an editor for an anthology titled Matrix: The Continuum (a collection of short stories and poems published by pharmacy students in the University of Ibadan) and is currently an editor for UITESWRITE Volume 4. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @jesuferanme.