The Diverse Bookshelf
The show that connects you with incredible authors from diverse backgrounds, and does a deep-dive into the issues they write about.
The Diverse Bookshelf
Ep84: Safia Elhillo on poetry, language, friendship & Sudan
This week, my guest on the show is the incredibly talented, Safia Elhillo. Safia’s work always leaves me mesmerised and craving for more. In her beautiful poetry, she explores themes of belonging, identity, home, friendship, love, pain, suffering, and so much more.
Safia Elhillo is the author of The January Children (University of Nebraska Press, 2017), which received the the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets and an Arab American Book Award, Girls That Never Die (One World/Random House, 2022), and the novel in verse Home Is Not A Country (Make Me A World/Random House, 2021), which was longlisted for the National Book Award and received a Coretta Scott King Book Award Author Honor.
Sudanese by way of Washington, DC, Safia received the 2015 Brunel International African Poetry Prize, and was listed in Forbes Africa’s 2018 “30 Under 30.” Her work appears in POETRY Magazine, Callaloo, and The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-day series, among others