We are excited to announce the judges for the 2025 Sabi Prize for Critical Reading and Writing
Adachioma Ezeano writes fiction for the stage and the screen. She is a 2021 O. Henry Prize recipient and a 2023 Best of the Net winner. Her short stories have appeared in Granta, Guernica, The McSweeney’s Anthology of Contemporary Literature, The Best Small Fictions, 2020, The Best Short Stories, 2021, and have been translated into Bengali and Italian.
Esther Ifesinachi Okonkwo is the author of The Tiny Things are Heavier, which was longlisted for the 2026 Dylan Thomas Prize and named a Best Book of 2025 by Vogue, Forbes, Open Country Mag, and Brittle Paper. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a PhD from Florida State University. She is currently an Assistant Professor of English and African and African American Studies at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. Her fiction has appeared in Isele Magazine, VQR, and Guernica. She’s a recipient of a 2021 Elizabeth George Foundation Grant and the 2024 Torch Literary Fellowship.