Home

Nnọọ! Welcome!

Chinụa Ezenwa-Ọhaeto is an Igbo and Nigerian poet, fiction and nonfiction writer, and essayist, exploring the themes of culture, religion, lineage, ancestry, divination (dibia afa), post-colonialism, migration and the complexities of existence.

He became a runner-up in the Sparks Poetry Competition, Memorial University, Canada, 2023. In 2018, he won the Castello di Duino Poesia Prize and the Eriata Oribhabor Poetry Prize (EOPP). In 2019, he was the winner of the Sevhage/Angus Poetry Prize. Winner of the Special ANMIG (National Association of the Mutilated and Invalids of War) prize: promotion of feelings of brotherhood between peoples, love of freedom and defense of peace, organized by Centro Giovani e Poesia di Triuggio, Italy, 2022. In 2023, Ezenwa-Ọhaeto was shortlisted for Writivism Poetry Prize, the Alpine Poetry Fellowship, and the 2024 runner-up in the African and Africa American Studies Program (AAASP) Best Graduate Paper Prize hosted by the Institute for Ethnic Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His works have appeared in Isele Magazine, Poetry Ireland Review, Oxford Poetry, Massachusetts Review, Frontier, Palette, The Common, Southword Magazine, Poet Lore, Colorado Review, Mud Season Review, Notra Dame, Anmly, The Republic, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Ruminate and elsewhere.

His full- length poetry collection, The Naming, will be out on December 1, 2025 with African Poetry Book Fund via Nebraska press. The Naming explores the movements, excesses, and extremes of existing as a postmodern individual, connecting these experiences to familial ancestry and lineage. The poems in this collection examine the various ways one remains tied to their ancestors which spanned eleven generations by re-imagining memories, history, childhood, homestead, kinship, migration, and the intersections of the past, present, and possible futures. Through this exploration, the collection seeks to rebuild a world that doesn’t merely replicate realities but reinvents, enshrines, and re-stories them.