Ajibola Tolase is a Nigerian poet and essayist. He is the author of 2000 Blacks, winner of the 2024 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, and 2024 Florida Book Award Gold Medal in poetry. He is a former Wallace Stegner fellow at Stanford University, Olive B. O’Connor Fellow in Poetry at Colgate University, and has received a creative writing grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation. He lives in Florida.