2024 SHORTLIST

Tryphena Yeboah is a Ghanaian writer and the author of the poetry chapbook, A Mouthful of Home (Akashic Books). Her fiction and essays have appeared in Narrative Magazine, Commonwealth Writers, and Lit Hub, among others. She is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, studying English with an emphasis in Creative Writing.

Nadia Davids is a South African writer, theatre-maker and scholar. Her plays (At Her Feet, What Remains, Hold Still) have been staged throughout Southern Africa and in Europe. Her debut novel An Imperfect Blessing was shortlisted for Pan-African Etisalat Prize for Literature. Nadia’s short fiction and essays have appeared in The American Scholar, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Astra Magazine, The Georgia Review, the Johannesburg Review of Books and Zyzzyva Magazine. She’s held residencies at Hedgebrook, Art Omi and The Women’s Project, and was a 2023 Aspen Words Writer. Nadia has taught at Queen Mary University of London and the University of Cape Town and is the President Emeritus of PEN South Africa.

Samuel Kọ́láwọlé was born and raised in Ibadan, Nigeria. He is the author of a new, critically acclaimed novel, The Road to the Salt Sea. His work has appeared in AGNI, New England Review, Georgia Review, The Hopkins Review, Gulf Coast, Washington Square Review, Harvard Review, Image Journal, and other literary publications. He has received numerous residencies and fellowships and has been a finalist for the Graywolf Press Africa Prize, International Book Award, and shortlisted for UK’s The First Novel Prize, and won an Editor-Writer Mentorship Program for Diverse Writers. He is a graduate of the MFA in Writing and Publishing at Vermont College of Fine Arts; and earned his PhD in English and Creative Writing from Georgia State University. He has taught creative writing in Africa, Sweden, and the United States, and currently teaches fiction writing as an Assistant Professor of English and African Studies at Pennsylvania State University.

Uche Okonkwo’s stories have been published in A Public Space, One Story, the Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2019, and Lagos Noir, among others. She is the author of the debut story collection A Kind of Madness: Tin House (2024); Narrative Landscape (2024); and VERVE Books (2025). A former Bernard O’Keefe Scholar at Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and resident at Art Omi, she is a recipient of the George Bennett Fellowship at Phillips Exeter Academy, a Steinbeck Fellowship, and an Elizabeth George Foundation grant. Okonkwo grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, and is currently pursuing a creative writing PhD at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Pemi Aguda is an MFA graduate from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan and the winner of the 2020 Deborah Rogers Foundation Award. Her writing has been published in One Story, Granta, Ploughshares, American Short Fiction, Zoetrope, and other publications, and has been awarded the O. Henry Prize for short fiction in 2022 and 2023. She is the author of a collection of stories, Ghostroots (W.W. Norton, 2024; Virago Press, 2024; and Masobe Books, 2024). Pemi is from Lagos, Nigeria.