Itiola Jones Receives Fellowship from Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing

The 20.35 Africa collective member will use the time to finish her collection of poetry.
I.S. Jones by Nicholas Nichols.

I.S. Jones by Nicholas Nichols.

Itiola Jones Receives Fellowship from Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing

The American Nigerian poet and music journalist Itiola Jones is a recipient of the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing’s Hoffman-Halls Emerging Artist Fellowship. The programme considers writers who have published only one full-length collection of creative writing.

Jones is an editor at the 20.35 Africa poetry collective. She is an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was the recipient of the inaugural 2019­-2020 Kemper K. Knapp University Fellowship. A Book Editor with Indolent Books and Editor at Voicemail Poems, she founded and facilitates The Singing Bullet, a month-long poetry workshop every April. She splits her time between Southern California and New York.

“I’m extremely grateful to Sean Hill for selecting me as one of this year’s Hoffman-Halls Emerging Arts Fellowship recipient,” Jones said in a comment to Open Country Mag. “The HEAF fellowship, which awards its recipients a generous stipend plus benefits, will afford me more time to finish my full-length collection of poems and my various other projects. Art Administration is very immediate work of the heart and I am grateful that I will continue to work as Director of the Watershed Reading Series for Art Lit Lab by giving writers a space to be paid for their work and to build community.”

“When I was awarded the Kemper K. Knapp Fellowship my first year,” she said, “it afforded me time and resources to complete and publish my chapbook. I wish to thank the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing for this incredible opportunity.”

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Paula Willie-Okafor, Staff Writer at Open Country Mag

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