Nigerian essayist and poet, Ajibola Tolase, has been selected as the winner of the 2024 Cave Canem. Tolase was awarded the prize for his manuscript 2,000 Blacks.
This was announced recently by the Los Angeles Poet Laureate and Cave Canem board member, Lynne Thompson.
Tolase will receive $1,000, publication of his book by the University of Pittsburgh Press, and a feature reading to take place at The New School in Fall 2024.
The Cave Canem fellowship, founded in 1996 to nurture Black poetry, boasts a distinguished alumni network, including Pulitzer and National Book Award winners. Tolase’s win places him among esteemed poets like Tracy K. Smith and Natasha Trethewey. His debut collection, “2,000 Blacks,” slated for release by the University of Pittsburgh Press in the fall, promises to make significant waves in contemporary poetry.
Ajibola Tolase is a graduate of the creative writing Masters of Fine Arts program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A chapbook of his poems entitled Koola Lobitos was published in 2021 as part of the New Generation African Poets Series, edited by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani. His published works appear in LitHub, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry and elsewhere. In addition to the Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, Tolase has received an Olive B. O’Connor Fellowship at Colgate University and a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation.
Born and raised in Ibadan, Nigeria, Tolase’s journey to literary success was marked by challenges and reinventions. Despite initial setbacks in pursuing engineering and statistics, his passion for poetry endured. His exploration of themes such as access, denial, and the historical flow of resources between Africa and the West, as seen in his collection, reflects his personal experiences and societal observations.
