The Academy of American Poets First Book Award is a $5,000 first-book publication prize. The 2022 award, chosen by Tyehimba Jess, was awarded to Saltwater Demands a Psalm by Kweku Abimbola (Incoming Writing Fellow 2023). Abimbola’s manuscript will be published by Graywolf Press in 2023, and he will become a Fellow at Civitella Ranieri. Congratulations, Kweku!
Born in the Gambia in 1997, Kweku Abimbola earned his MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program. He is of Gambian, Ghanaian, and Sierra Leonean descent. Abimbola’s writing primarily investigates colonization, Black mourning, Black boyhood, Black aliveness, gender politics, and the spiritual consequences of climate change in West Africa.
Abimbola is a finalist for the 2021 Brunel International African Poetry Prize and the second-place winner of the Furious Flower 2020 poetry contest. He has work published and forthcoming in Shade Literary Arts, 20.35 Africa, The Common, Obsidian, SUNU Journal, and elsewhere.
He lives in Detroit and works as a teaching artist for the literary nonprofit Inside Out Literary Arts, where he holds workshops in poetry and creative writing for middle school students in Detroit Public Schools. Learn more about Kweku here; click here to learn more about the AAP First Book Award.