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
Eezer Agu
Managing Editor
Precious Okpechi
Permanent Editor
JK Anowe
Editorial Assistants
Olúwatamílọ́re Òshó
Isaiah Adepoju
Nnenna Tochi Itanyi
Eezer 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. Eezer 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 where he is a Woodruff Fellow.
Precious Okpechi is an alumnus of the Kenyon Review Writing Workshop, Los Angeles Review of Books Publishing Workshop, Outspoken Press Academy 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 and the Virginia Piper Cultural Exchange Fellowship. Precious serves as the Managing Editor at 20.35 Africa.
JK Anowe is an Igbo-born poet, editor, and teacher. They are the author of the poetry chapbooks The Ikemefuna Tributaries: a parable for paranoia (Praxis Magazine Online, 2016) and Sky Raining Fists (Madhouse Press, 2019). His poems have appeared in The Chicago Reader, Gulf Coast, Palette Poetry, and elsewhere. They were a finalist for the 2019 Gerard Kraak Prize and have also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize (2020) and the Best of the Net (2014 and 2020). Anowe earned his MFA+MA in Northwestern University where he was the Gwendolyn M. Carter Fellow in African Studies. In 2025, they were awarded the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. They are at work on their first collection of poems and a novel.
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.
Isaiah Adepoju is an Osogbo artist. He is a recipient of the Donald E Waterfall Scholarship Fund, the Akachi Chukwuemeka Prize for Literature, and the Lagos London Poetry Prize. He is also a fellow of UNDERTOW Poetry Fellowship, Rongo Artist Residency, and Ebedi International Writing Residency. He curated three editions of the ANA-OAU Books and Art Festival, and he is currently querying his two novel manuscripts. Reach him via Instagram: Isaiah_Adepoju_
Kelly Askew is the Niara Sudarkasa Collegiate Professor of Anthropology and Afroamerican & African Studies at the University of Michigan. Her current research projects focus on Swahili poetry, Indigenous political movements, property rights, critical development studies, energy access, postsocialism and performance in Tanzania. She is also a filmmaker whose film, Maasai Remix (2019) won the 2020 Dikalo Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary Film at the Cannes Panafrican International Film Festival.
Nathan Suhr-Sytsma works at Emory University in Atlanta, where he is Associate Professor of English and a core faculty member of the Institute of African Studies. He teaches and writes about twentieth- and twenty-first-century poetry, African literature, and the environmental humanities. He is the author of two scholarly books: Poetry, Print, and the Making of Postcolonial Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and African Poetry Worlds in the Twenty-First Century (Oxford University Press, 2026). He also serves on the executive council of the African Literature Association.
Akosua Zimba Afiriyie-Hwedie is a Zambian-Ghanaian poet who grew up in Botswana. She holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan and is the author of Born in a Second Language, winner of Button Poetry’s Chapbook Contest. She is a recipient of a Hopwood Award and a Meader Family Award, and has been a finalist for Narrative’s 12th Annual Poetry Prize, the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, the Palette Poetry Spotlight Award, the Furious Flower Poetry Prize, and Wick Poetry Center’s Peace Poem Contest. She has received fellowships from Tin House, the Helen Zell Writers’ Program, Callaloo, and the Watering Hole. Her work has appeared in Pank, Kweli, Obsidian, and elsewhere.
At 20.35 Africa, we seek to build towards the future of African letters that our readers, contributors, and staff deserve – one that uplifts living African poets from all over the continent and the diaspora. This effort is sustained by a committed team whose work is mostly pro bono. 20.35 Africa has thus thrived over the years through the sheer passion of its members, who share an understanding of the imperative position of their work. The other half of that work is you and we hope you will help us continue building into the future with your contributions.
Your generous support helps us pay for the administrative and general operating costs of running this organization. We want to thank you in advance for supporting living African poets and the pursuit of crafting a new contemporary voice, a collection of voices. Our publications remain free and open to the public for consumption. Your generosity and continuous support make all of this possible.
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