About 20.35 Africa

Ebenezer Agu is a poet, nonfiction writer, literary critic, and alumnus of the Los Angeles Review of Books Publishing Workshop. He received his MFA from the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ program where he was named the Elsie Choy Lee Scholar by the CEW+ for his impressive accomplishments and perseverance in pursuing his academic goals and awarded The Gupta Values Scholarship by the Rackham Graduate School, for his demonstrated integrity, commitment to human dignity, and dedication to excellence. In 2022, he was featured in Open Country Mag’s special issue on The Next Generation of African Literature. In 2020, he was nominated for The Future Awards Africa Prize for Literature. Between 2016 and 2018, he edited the poetry of the two volumes of 14: An Anthology of Queer Art. Ebenezer has also worked in the field of creative economy as a culture, art, and gender expert with AU-EU Youth Cooperation Hub, a youth organization under the African Union and the European Union. Currently, he is getting his PhD at Emory University.

Precious Okpechi is an alumnus of the Los Angeles Review of Books Publishing Workshop, Outspoken Press Academy Workshop, and The Singing Bullet Writing Workshop. His works appear in Palette Poetry, A Long House, Lolwe, The Shore, Isele Magazine, and PubLab. He is an MFA candidate at Arizona State University where he was awarded an Outstanding Research Potential Award. Precious serves as the Managing Editor at 20.35 Africa.

I.S. Jones is an American / Nigerian poet and essayist. She is the author of Bloodmercy (Copper Canyon Press, 2025) which won the APR/Honickman First Book Prize and the chapbook Spells of My Name (Newfound, 2021). She is a Graduate Fellow with The Watering Hole and holds fellowships from Callaloo, Bread Loaf, BOAAT Writer’s Retreat, and Brooklyn Poets. Her works have appeared or are forthcoming in Guernica, Washington Square Review, LA Review of Books, Prairie Schooner and elsewhere. Itiola received her MFA in Poetry at University of Wisconsin–Madison where she was the inaugural 2019-2020 Kemper K. Knapp University Fellowship recipient and the 2021-2022 Hoffman Hall Emerging Artist Fellowship recipient. She is currently an instructor with Brooklyn Poets, a reader for Poetry Magazine, and is the 2023 Bread Loaf Rona Jaffe Scholar.

JK Anowe (he/they) is an Igbo-born poet, editor, teacher, and multi-literary artist. A Gwendolyn M. Carter Fellow in African Studies at Northwestern University, Anowe lives and writes from Chicago where they are an MFA+MA candidate at the Litowitz Writing Program.

Portia Dede Opare is an editorial assistant at 20.35 Africa. She completed an MPhil in African Literature and Development Studies with a focus on Transnational African Literature. She is currently enrolled in an MA course in English-Speaking Cultures at the University of Bremen, Germany. She believes in the peculiar power of words and their capacity to bind, soothe, and heal. Portia is passionate about all forms of poetry, especially contemporary African poetry.

Olúwatamílọ́re Òshó is a Nigerian born poet and writer. She’s a graduate of the University of Benin, Nigeria. She works as the social media manager for 20.35 Africa. Her works are recently published or forthcoming in Roadrunner Review, ANMLY Lit Mag, PANK magazine, Olney Magazine, and elsewhere.

Nnenna Tochi Itanyi is a full-time architect with a BSc and MSc from Bartlett School of Architecture. Right now, she works as an architect with Rogers Stirk Harbor and Partners in London. She also works as a freelance graphic designer and photographer. Her desire is to create fine art that invite viewers to bypass the mundane and revel in the uniqueness of the subject.