Safia Elhillo
Biography of Safia Elhillo
Safia Elhillo (born December 16, 1990) is the author of the poetry collection The January Children, which received the 2016 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets and a 2018 Arab American Book Award. Her novel in verse Home Is Not a Country (Make Me A World/Random House, 2021) was longlisted for the National Book Award. Her 2023 novel in verse, Bright Red Fruit (Make Me a World/Random House), was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize.
Sudanese by way of Washington, DC, she holds an MFA from The New School, a Cave Canem Fellowship, and a 2018 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. Safia is a Pushcart Prize nominee, co-winner of the 2015 Brunel International African Poetry Prize, and listed in Forbes Africa’s 2018 ”30 Under 30.“ She is a 2019-2021 Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.
Learn more at Safia Elhillo’s official website.
