Isaac Kanyinji was announced the Ubwali Hope Prize 2025 winner on Saturday, June 26, 2025.
Ubwali is a literary magazine founded to showcase Zambian voices in 2014 that has published four editions. One of their projects is the Ubwali Hope Prize, organised in partnership with Shenandoah, to celebrate the best of Zambian prose and poetry, and first won by Mukandi Siame.
The second edition kicked off with the announcement of the shortlist selected from a pool of many gifted Zambian authors on Sunday, June 1, before the winner was revealed to be Isaac Kanyinji. He receives an honorarium of $500, and his poem A 2019 Survey on How People Imagine Themselves Dying will be featured in the fall issue of Shenandoah. Kanyinji’s work has been published in Publish’d Afrika, Poemify, and Salamander Ink Mag.
The judges, Mubanga Kalimamukwento and Mukandi Siame, said, “Isaac is a masterful poet. In A 2019 Survey on How People Imagine Themselves Dying, he delivers a deftly crafted poem, balancing the weight of psychological crisis against the mundanities of daily life without ever veering into self-indulgence. Even within the constraints of such a taut container, he’s successful in capturing the innate human impulse to seek joy amid profound trauma. The language remains accessible throughout, making the poem’s stark contrasts all the more striking—yet, like the malady conveyed in the text, nothing insulates the reader from the devastating blow of that final line. A stunning work from a remarkably promising poet.”
Isaac Kanyinji said, “I am truly honoured to see my work come this far. When a poem finds an audience, it reminds me, the writer, that poetry is one way of giving. Getting to win a prize like this one, however, appends something more to the act of offering that poetry already is: It is a reminder that poetry can give back in the form of recognition, and that brings me so much joy.”
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