Call for poetry submissions for ‘20.35 Africa Anthology’

In its seventh year, the 20.35 Africa Anthology series is the longest-running anthology for living African poets.

In the same legacy as Black Orpheus and Transition, 20.35 Africa positions itself as a curatorial space to bring young voices from all over the continent together, shaping a rich amalgamation of voices on the continent and in the diaspora.

We are glad to announce our call for submissions for the seventh volume.

Thea Matthews and Kwame Opoku-Duku will guest edit the anthology and work with 20.35 Africa editors Ebenezer Agu, IS Jones, and Precious Okpechi.

Opoku-Duku, born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in the US, is a Ghanian-American poet and fiction writer. The author of The Unbnd Verses (Glass Poetry Press), his work appears in The Atlantic, The Nation, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, BOMB, The Yale Review and other publications. He lives in Brooklyn, New York City, where he is an educator.

Matthews is a poet, educator and editor of African and indigenous Mexican descent from San Francisco, California. She holds an MFA in poetry from New York University and a BA in sociology from UC Berkeley. Her poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming in the Colorado Review, Obsidian Journal: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, The Massachusetts Review, Epiphany Magazine, Alta Journal, The New Republic and others.

Author and editor Nathan McClain says of her poetry: “Deploying familiar, if not found language often as refrain, Matthews shows us ourselves, shows us our nation, and what it deems significant enough to value or keep.”

In the autumn of 2023, Matthews was a poet in residence at the Museum of African Diaspora in San Francisco. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Click here for the submission guidelines.

Article provided by Precious Okpechi on behalf of 20.35 Africa Anthology