The 2024 Abebi Award in Afro-Nonfiction

Founder’s Notes:

It is 8pm in Lagos and I am walking on the street with five women who have turned to words to make meaning, magic, and victory of their respective lives. They are the winning cohort of the 2024 Abebi Award, and it is the first day of our residency. As I walk in their midst, hearing laughter and squeals of joy, interspersed with poignant questions and offerings of truth, I bask in fulfillment alongside them as I watch craft and community build right in front of my eyes. The harvest has come, and god is it beautiful.

The 2024 edition of The Abebi Award in AfroNonfiction is testament to the persistence of literature even in the midst of challenging circumstances and harsh landscapes. In the second year of its existence, The Award received nearly three times the amount of submissions from its inaugural year, proving to me that there is indeed a demand and a hunger for the growth and development of this precious genre that I have found both refuge and victory in.

Receiving entries from every geopolitical zone, and from diverse age ranges, I remain firmly committed to the truth that there are stories woven into our voices as women in this country, and we at The Abebi AfroNonfiction Institute will strive to give these stories a place of pride and prominence in this world.

The essays this year marvel with their closeness to self, the power of language, and the force of our collective humanity. As we dive into these essays, we enter into worlds of tenderness and truth, of grandmothers battling dementia with the power of photography and love, of young girls in secondary school conflating perfection with beauty, and the unravelling of such erroneous conjecture in the gentle fierceness of womanhood. We are in Ibadan, underneath ancient trees, as a young woman balances the tensions of romance amidst the demands of religion and culture. We travel to Ghana and Kaduna, learning how place and class shape the entire consciousness of a childhood. We are inside a molue in Lagos, contemplating the meaning of home and the loss, and discovery of it, again and again. In all of these essays, I remain moved by the authenticity of these writers and their willingness to confront the inner realities that constitute their lives. It is exactly the kind of work the Institute seeks to highlight and honour. It gives me great pleasure that three of the five writers in the winning cohort are alumni of the The Place and Emotion Masterclass held by the Institute in August of 2024. This progression shows us that we are indeed achieving our goals of equipping and educating Nigerian women writing creative nonfiction today.

In the spirit of this goal, I am proud to announce that this year, all the applicants whose work was not selected for publication by our panel of judges received a creative writing workbook curated by myself and Ucheoma Onwutuebe, because we care about the development of every single person that submitted to us.

My notes would not be complete without sincere and heartfelt thanks rendered to our generous sponsors: Dr Yemi Ogunbiyi; Mr and Mrs Edun; my mother Morenike Okupe; and Jadesola Osiberu, the award-winning filmmaker and CEO of Greoh Studios, whose contributions made this award and the accompanying residency possible. Deep and boundless gratitude to Ope Adedeji and Ajoke Bodunde, my co-judges who committed both their time and expertise. Ukamaka Olisakwe, Editor-in-Chief of Isele Magazine: thank you for opening your home to these essays, for giving them a place to sing into the world. My mother, Morenike, for birthing me and listening to this idea in its earliest iteration. For all of Abebi’s daughters, thank you. To my grandmother, the fountain we all sprung from: Abebi mi, Olorun a te yin si afefe rere. Your memory is a great blessing to me, and even though I never met you, I feel you with me and I know you in my spirit. To the Master Creator and The One that Holds Everything together, your daughter is forever grateful. Look at the seed you placed in my hand Baba mi. See how I have bent to the soil to plant it. Please water it, let its leaves become a canopy of everlasting green that spreads throughout eternity.

See you next year!

In love and tenderness,

Mofiyinfoluwa O.