All is set for the 17th CORA-Nigeria Prize for Literature Book Party being organised for poets on the longlist for the 2026 edition of The Nigeria Prize for Literature (NLP).
The Literature Prize worth $100,000 cash award is endowed and promoted by the NLNG.
The annual Book Party is scheduled to be held on Sunday, August 2, 2026, at the Shell Zenith Hall, MUSON Centre, Onikan, Lagos at 1pm .
The event will also accommodate virtual guests via Zoom and will be broadcast live across social media platforms.
The genre in focus this 2026 is poetry. The 11 poets on the longlist were drawn from 223 entries received for the competition this year. The books on the longlist for the 2026 NPL are:
‘Adult Love’ by Tanure Ojaide, ‘Bakandamiya: An Elegy’, by Saddiq Dzukogi, ‘Black Passport’, by Paul Akpomuje, ‘2000 Blacks’, by Ajibola Tolase, and
‘Ceremony for The Nameless’, by Theresa Lola.
Others include: ‘Corpus: Animistic Verses’, by Ayo Oyeku, ‘Floral’s Love Colony’, by Tares Oburumu,
‘The Origin of Wounds’, by Rasaq Malik Gbolahan,
‘The Years of Blood’, by Adedayo Agarau,
‘Unbind Me Now’, by James Ugwu Eze and
‘Why Does God Need a Gun?’, by Ogaga Ifowodo.
The Book Party, a literary feast of ideas and life, celebrates the authors and their works for emerging as the very best in the country. It promises to be an afternoon of literary feasting, featuring performances, winning, and dining.
The CORA-Nigeria Prize for Literature Book Party, a special iteration of the CORA Book Party launched in 1996, was initiated after a review of the first five years of the esteemed Prize project. The idea is to create a platform through which the public gets to engage with the works considered the best of the usually, over 200 entries per edition of the NPL.
