Cave Canem, the presitigious literary home for Black poets, has announced its 2025 cohort of Fellows—sixteen emerging and established voices currently gathered at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg for a transformative week-long residency. Among this year’s cohort are three poets from Nigeria: Saddiq Dzukogi, Tobi Kassim, and Zaynab Iliyasu Bobi.

The Cave Canem Fellowship is widely regarded as a vital space for Black poets to grow artistically and professionally. Through workshops, readings, and rigorous creative discourse, Fellows explore a spectrum of poetic traditions—from experimental and performance poetry to political and confessional modes. The retreat is not only a site of study, but a community-building experience designed to nurture long-term collaboration.

Saddiq Dzukogi is a poet and assistant professor at Mississippi State University’s Department of English. He is the author of Your Crib, My Qibla (University of Nebraska Press), a highly-acclaimed poetry collection which has earned him the 2022 Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, and the 2021 Julie Suk Award as a co-winner. His most recent work Bakandamiya: An Elegy (University of Nebraska Press) is a book-length epic poet set in Northern Nigeria.

Tobi Kassim is an emerging poet and the recipient of the Sean T. Lannan Poetry Prize from Yale University, as well as an Undocupoets Fellowship. His poems have been published in The Volta, The Brooklyn Review, The Hampden Sydney Poetry Review, Zocalo Public Square, and elsewhere.

Zaynab Iliyasu Bobi is a Nigerian-Hausa poet, digital artist, and photographer, and a graduate of Medical Laboratory Science from Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto. She is the author of the forthcoming chapbook Sixteen Songs of Loss, selected as a finalist by Rita Mookerjee (Sundress Publications Chapbook Competition, 2023), winner of the inaugural Folorunsho Editor’s Poetry Prize 2023, and Labari Poetry Prize 2023, to name a few of the book’s accolades.

Joining them in the 2025 cohort are a dynamic group of poets including Ajanaé Dawkins, Asia Calcagno, Brandon Kilbourne, Cherise Benton, Crystal Valentine, Joel Kemegue, Kailah Figueroa, Kyle Carrero Lopez, Marina Avery Robinson, MaKshya Tolbert, Nicole Sessions, Rodrick Minor, and Wes Matthews.

Cave Canem has frequently included Black African poets including Nick Makoha (Uganda), Ladan Osman (Somalia/U.S.), and Funto Omojola (Nigeria/U.S.) among others. Thus, the fellowship also works to build of kinship among Black poets across the diaspora.

Congratulations to the 2025 cohort!