The 2025 Abebi AfroNonfiction Award
It is with great joy and a deep commitment to the power of women’s stories that we gladly open the submissions for the 2025 Abebi Award in AfroNonfiction. For the past two years, we have had the great privilege of receiving hundreds of essays from Nigerian women who have shown us the beauty, complexity, sadness, joy and most of all, the universality of our shared stories.
This year, we are inviting submissions that ask writers to WITNESS; to pay close attention to the world around them, the cities they live in, the relationships they occupy, the inner workings of their hearts, bodies, souls and spirits. At its etymological root, the word witness means:
to "see or know by personal presence, observe" (from 1580s) or "attestation of fact, event, etc., from personal knowledge”
The word ‘personal’, appears both times in the etymological root, and that is exactly what we hope to emphasize; this kind of witnessing is born from a close, deep, tender reckoning with the personal truths that shape your reality; whether you agree with them or not, or how you seek to forge new truths. In a forthcoming interview with Open County, when asked about essays that have shone brightly in the award submissions so far, Mofiyinfoluwa responded:
‘I am always on the lookout for essays that show authenticity, close observation, and a rigorous interrogation of the self — and/or society…….The essays that stood out to me were those that rose to these criteria in inventive and engaging ways, those that challenge the readily digestible structures and tenets our society rests on or shine a different light on a much-written-about topic. I was also moved by universality of subject matter; from grief to mother-daughter relationships, to the thrills and dangers of desire, to grappling with death. I especially loved an essay written in the form of unsent messages to the queer protagonist's mother, combined with lines of poetry. When mother-daughter relationships are explored with depth and candor, I am moved. The essays reflect the highs and lows of Nigerian women dealing with mortality, reproductive health, romance, and identity. These are all things that touch all our lives one way or another. In a similar way, the 2024 submissions delve into universal triumphs and woes, although I found that they veer a bit from the communal and into individual, a generally closer brush with the self, and that gave me a deeper dive through interiority, which I enjoyed. They inched closer to the line of desire, both internal and external.’
Blow us away with your essays!
Submission Guidelines
- The award is open to Nigerian women, 18 and above who were born in, grew up in, or have significant lived experience within and proximity to the country. We encourage entries from queer women.
- The award is open to writers who have not published a complete body of work (such as a memoir or a novel through a publishing house), and will not have done so by December 2025.
- All entries should be creative nonfiction: i.e. real life stories derived from true events from the writer’s life. We are not looking for academic, scholarly or purely journalistic essays. We believe in the revolutionary power of personal narrative and so we would love to read essays that delve deep into emotional interiorities, family relations, gendered expectations, patriarchal conditioning and triumph. This does not mean essays must be sad, or political but that they depict the complexities of what it is to move as a woman in this country/continent. You can see last year’s winning entries or those from 2023 to get a feel of the kind of essays we seek to celebrate.
- All entries should be within the range of 1,500–3,000 words in length
- Submissions should be made through https://forms.gle/xDVt4W9zXT1qcK3P9
- Submissions will open from the 1st of September WAT at 9am WAT and close on the 15th of October at 6pm WAT.
- Writers will receive responses to their submissions in the third week in December.
- A winner will be announced in the first week of January 2026, along with a runner up and three notable entries.
- The winner will be awarded N250,000 and the first runner up will be awarded N150,000. Each notable entry will receive N75,000.
- The winner, runner up and three notable entries will be invited to a two-day all expense paid writer’s residency in Lagos, in January 2026. The residency will close with an award ceremony followed by a reading event to celebrate the winning writers. Further details will be released closer to the aforementioned time.
- If you have any questions, kindly reach out to us via email at abebiaward@gmail.com
The 2025 Abebi AfroNonfiction Award is generously sponsored by SELAR. The 2025 Abebi Award in AfroNonfiction will be judged by Ucheoma Onwutuebe, Ope Adedeji and Mofiyinfoluwa O.
Please visit our website to read more about our judges as well as submission guidelines and further information for applicants.
MEET THE JUDGES
Ucheoma Onwutuebe
Ucheoma Onwutuebe is a Nigerian writer. She is the recipient of a Waasnode Fiction Prize form Passages North and has received residencies from Yaddo, Art Omi, and the Anderson Center. Her works have appeared in A Public Space, Catapult, Bellevue Literary Review, Passages North, Prairie Schooner, Off Assignment, Bakwa Magazineand elsewhere. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Nevada Las Vegas and is currently a PhD fellow at the University of Tennessee Knoxville.
Ope Adedeji
Ope Adedji is an award-winning writer focusing on women’s and human rights and migration. Her work has appeared in publications such as McSweeney’s Quarterly, Inque Magazine, and The Republic. She was a 2021 Miles Morland Scholar and writes a substack about the science and power of writing.
Mofiyinfoluwa O
Mofiyinfoluwa O. is a Nigerian writer living in London. Her work is concerned with the interior of African womanhood; our conceptions of desire, spirit, self and embodiment. She is a graduate of The Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program. Her work has appeared in Guernica, Ploughshares, The Black Warrior Review, Pleiades and elsewhere. Her essays have received a Pushcart nomination and been selected as a Best American Essay Notable Entry (2022). She is the founder of The Abebi AfroNonficton Foundation; a literary body committed to championing nonfiction by African women. She is at work on her debut memoir interrogating the body and spirit’s relationship with desire and faith