OTHUKE UMUKORO (b. 1990)

Othuke Umukoro, Nigerian poet and playwright, is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he won the Academy of American Poets University Poetry Prize. His debut poetry collection, Fenestration (Texas Review Press, 2025), was selected by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Diane Seuss as the winner of the 2024 X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize. Othuke won the prestigious Brunel International African Poetry Prize in 2021, has taught at the University of Iowa, was the judge for the 2024 Kofi Awoonor Poetry Prize, and was the inaugural X.J. Kennedy Poetry Fellow at the Vermont Studio Center. 

Photography by Joshua Thermidor