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The beginning
20.35 Africa began in 2017 as an annual electronic anthology publishing African poets under 35 years of age but not below 20. Aware that the concept of contemporary poetry could be extensive, we brought it down to age, to publish a specific generation of this wider period in African poetry.
In our current expansion, 20.35 Africa has added two more series to the anthology series: Conversations and New Poets.
The Conversations series is a scale-up of what we started in 2018 with Nkateko Masinga & Cheswayo Mphanza, which won the 2019 Brittle Paper Anniversary Award. Part of our mission at 20.35 Africa is to not only compile contemporary African poetry, but through the Conversations series to have an ongoing discussion on what poetry means for us all at this age; the ways it has morphed & gaps it fills in our personal, social, & political life. The vision is to build an organic contemporary African poetics, driven alike & equally by all the stakeholders within the field.
The New Poets series is self-explanatory: we wish to give more individual visibility to contemporary African poets through this new channel. While we don’t intend to restrict inclusion to the series continentally, our priority focuses on poets living in Africa.
Building a career as an African poet entails a handful of challenges, which are compounded for the African poet living on the continent.
None of the few major structures that exist for African poets are homegrown, meaning that these poets are alternatively bound to pitching validation and facility internationally in terms of agencies, prizes, degree-awarding programs, publication presses, media platforms, fellowships, workshops, and residencies.
At 20.35 Africa, we are committed to a gradual but steady promotion of contemporary African poetry and poets.
Our main objective is to grow in being a resource institution for African poets, targeting the needs of both the poets in the center and those at the margin of the scene. To establish the structures currently lacking for the African poet, such as: prizes, masterclasses, fellowships, workshops, residencies. To rethink the existing processes of the production and dissemination of contemporary African poetry and come up with innovative ideas for greater efficiency. To utilize digital tools and other forms of new media in capacity building for contemporary African poetry and poets.
Our actions are guided by the principle of community development through our existing and prospective projects. We are a collective of young Africans with a core belief that contemporary African poetry and poetics can be driven from home.
Founder, Editor-in-Chief
Ebenezer Agu
Managing Editor
Precious Okpechi
Permanent Editor
I.S. Jones
Editorial Assistants
Portia Dede Opare
Nnenna Tochi Itanyi
Olúwatamílọ́re Òshó
Ebenezer Agu is a candidate of The University of Michigan's Helen Zell Writers' Program. He is a poet, nonfiction writer, and literary critic. He is a fellow of the Los Angeles Review of Books Publishing Workshop. In 2022, he was featured in Open Country’s special issue on The Next Generation of African literature; named the Elsie Choy Lee Scholar by the CEW+, University of Michigan, for his impressive accomplishments and perseverance in pursuing his academic goals; and awarded The Gupta Values Scholarship by the Rackham Graduate School, University of Michigan, for his demonstrated integrity, commitment to human dignity, and dedication to excellence. 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.
Precious Okpechi is a Biochemistry graduate from the University of Nigeria Nsukka. He is a fellow of the Los Angeles Review of Books Publishing Workshop and The Singing Bullet Writing Workshop. His works appear in Palette Poetry, Lolwe, The Shore, Isele Magazine. Precious is Managing Editor at 20.35 Africa.
I.S. Jones is an American / Nigerian poet and essayist. 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. She 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. Her chapbook Spells of My Name (2021) is out with Newfound. She is at work on her debut collection of poems.
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.
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.
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.
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