Gbenga Adesina

Gbenga Adesina, Nigerian born poet and essayist, jointly won the 2016 Brunel African Poetry Prize. His poem, “How To Paint A Girl” was selected by Mathew Zapruder for its “clarity of observation and empathetic insight into the suffering of another” for the New York Times. He was a 2016 Norman Mailer Poetry Fellow at Pepperdine University, Malibu, California. He has received scholarships and residencies from Fine Arts Work Centre, Provincetown and The Open Society Foundation in Goree Island, off the coast of Senegal. His poems have appeared or forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Brittle Paper, Vinyl, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. His poetry manuscript, “Holy Bodies,” was a finalist for the 2017 Sillerman First Book Prize. He is the author of the chapbook “Painter of Water,” included in New-Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set (Tatu).