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National Book Foundation > Author > Safia Elhillo
Safia Elhillo is the author of the poetry collection The January Children, which received the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets and an Arab American Book Award. (Photo credit: Aris Theotokatos) More about this author >
Nima wishes she were someone else. She doesn’t feel understood by her mother, who grew up in a different land. She doesn’t feel accepted in her suburban town; yet somehow, she isn't different enough to belong elsewhere. Her best friend, Haitham, is the only person with whom she can truly be herself. Until she can't, and suddenly her only refuge is gone. More about this book >
Safia Elhillo is the author of the poetry collection The January Children, which received the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets and an Arab American Book Award. Sudanese by way of Washington, DC, she holds an MFA from The New School, a Cave Canem Fellowship, and a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. Safia is a Pushcart Prize nominee, co-winner of the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, and listed in Forbes Africa’s 2018 “30 Under 30.” She was a 2019-2021 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.
(Photo credit: Aris Theotokatos)