Announcing the Winner of the Unbound Emerging Poet Award: Sojourner Ahebee!

Thanks to the huge generosity of an anonymous donor, Unbound is delighted to announce the creation of the Unbound Emerging Poet Award. Each year the festival will select one young and promising poet near the start of their career to attend the festival and present their work to a new audience. We are excited at the possibilities of this award, and very grateful to the donor who made it possible.

We’re pleased to announce that the winner of the inaugural award is the wonderfully talented Sojourner Ahebee.

Sojourner Ahebee writes stories about African diaspora identities and the eternal question of home and belonging. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in The Atlantic,  The Academy of American Poets (Poem A Day), Muzzle Magazine, For Harriet, Winter Tangerine Review, Apiary Magazine and elsewhere. In 2013 she served as a National Student Poet, the nation's highest honor for young poets presenting original work. Sojourner was invited to the White House by former First Lady, Michelle Obama, to garner her award. A graduate of Stanford University, she is a recipient of the MacDowell Fellowship, and her debut poetry chapbook, Reporting from the Belly of the Night, was released in August 2017. Sojourner believes not in the boat that floated her here but what she’ll do with the water.