Isele Awards 2025 longlists announced

The Isele Awards 2025 longlists, the fourth edition of the awards, were announced on Wednesday, April 16, 2025.

The Isele Prizes were founded to celebrate the best short stories, poetry, and essays by writers published in Isele Magazine, founded in 2022, with a panel of two judges judges each category. The winners in the first edition were Esther Ifesinachi Okonkwo, Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike, and Nora Nneka followed in 2023 by Ashia Ajani, Jennifer Dickinson, and Chinonso Nzeh. The 2024 winners were Gloria Mwaniga, Alex Leslie, and Erinola Daranijo.

The 2025 journey started with the announcement of ten in each of the three categories from the 250 entries for stories, essays, and poems published in Isele Magazine between February 1, 2024, and February 28, 2025. They were selected by an in-house jury that believed that their brilliance and emotional resonance captured the magazine’s mission to provide a platform for writers who hold a mirror to our society.

The longlisted entries are;

The Isele Short Story Prize

• Koala, Koala, Koala, Chantelle Chiwetalu
• Matrimony, Adams Adeosun
• Gone Case, Duboree Das
• Sports Ball, Nathaniel Krenkel
• Flowers in Bloom, Lucia Edafioka
• The Place of the Rainbow, Rutendo Chidzodzo
• Not Like Other Boys, Josiah Ikpe
• The Beginning of Bad Things, Isaac Chika
• Mothers and Daughters, Annie Russo
• In Her Head, Sarah Durham

The Isele Nonfiction Prize

• Notes of a Nonresident Alien, Tolu Daniel
• Basturma Chronicles, Maria Baha
• Some Seasons I Have Known, Kemi Falodun
• A Study in Red, Kharys Ateh Laue
• On Accent and Confidence, Idowu Odeyemi
• When The Knife Cuts, Paul Chuks
• Womb and Period Hu(r)ts, Muti’ah Badruddeen
• How to Murder a Voice, Orji Victor Ebubechukwu
• Totally Atwood, Anthony J. Mohr
• everything I know about genocide, part three, Erica Rivera

Isele Poetry Prize

• Five Poems, Jennifer E Hudgens
• Three Poems, Fatima Abdullahi
• Two Poems, Shauna AV Gunnell
• Three Poems, Daniel Seifert
• Two Poems, Connor Watkins-Xu
• Three Poems, Jonathan Langdon
• Kpo Fire, Marvellous Igwe
• Three Poems, D Larissa Peters
• Three Poems, Elly Katz
• Two Poems, Purbasha Roy

The shortlists will be announced on May 16, before the winners are made public on June 20, 2025