The possibility that the present is a continued struggle against nihilism, marked by the will to create, offers important questions about identity and heritage: what does it mean to exist in the present? Out of what matter do we form our identities? How are we different now than in the past? And, finally, what “pasts” unite us, and which legacies might we still identify with, even if we never experienced them? Charged with the political, Ex Nihilo is a poetic text that considers how art can respond to the annihilation of particular identities struggling to exist in an impossibly post-racial world, framed against the possibility that art and identity are creations ex nihilo (Latin for “out of nothing”) whose immateriality allow us to engage in endless discursive creativity, as we travel and endlessly (re)create ourselves.

Ex Nihilo was longlisted for the University of Wales Dylan Thomas Prize for Young Writers. The £30,000 University of Wales Dylan Thomas Prize, is one of the largest prizes for young writers and is awarded to the best published or produced literary work in the English language, written by an author under 30. This year’s long list consists of 16 literary works – poetry, novels and a play – by writers from Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, the United States, South Africa and Somalia.

Adebe D.A's profile page

Adebe D. A. is a writer whose words travel between Toronto and New York City. She recently completed her MA at York University, where she also served as Assistant Editor for the arts and literary journal, Existere. Her work has been published in various North American sources, such as Canadian Woman Studies Journal, The Claremont Review, Canadian Literature, CV2 and The Toronto Star. She won the Toronto Poetry Competition in 2005 to become Toronto’s first Junior Poet Laureate. Ex Nihilo is her debut collection.