Foluso Agbaje
Foluso Agbaje is a British-Nigerian writer exploring how choices and connections shape who we are. After studying at the Faber Academy, she completed her debut novel, The Parlour Wife. Her background in Accounting, an MSc in Management and Human Resources from LSE, and work in Finance and HR offer perspectives that continue to inform her storytelling. Away from her desk, Foluso enjoys visiting bookshops and museums, watching period dramas, and seeking inspiration in new places.
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Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah
Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah is a Ghanaian feminist writer and blogger. She co-founded award-winning blog Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women and has written for The Guardian and Open Democracy. Sekyiamah is the Director for Communications manager at the Association for Women's Rights in Development and a member of the Black Feminism Forum Working Group which organised the historic first Black Feminist Forum in Bahia, Brazil.
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Uwem Akpan
Uwem Akpan was born in Ikot Akpan Eda in the Niger Delta in Nigeria. Uwem’s short stories and autobiographical pieces have appeared in the special editions of The New Yorker, the Oprah magazine, Hekima Review, the Nigerian Guardian, America, etc.
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His first book, Say You’re One of Them, was published in 2008 by Little, Brown, after a protracted auction. It made the “Best of the Year” list at People magazine, Wall Street Journal, and other places. The New York Times made it the Editor’s Choice, and Entertainment Weekly listed it at # 27 in their Best of the Decade. Say You’re One of Them won the Commonwealth Prize (Africa Region), the Open Book Prize, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. The collection of short stories was the 2009 Oprah Book -
Louisa Onomé
Louisa Onomé is a writer of books for teens. She holds a BA in professional writing from York University and is represented by Claire Friedman at InkWell Management.
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A part of the Author Mentor Match round 3 cohort, she is also a writing mentor and all-around cheerleader for diverse works and writers. When she is not writing, her hobbies include picking up languages she may never use, trying to bake bread, and perfecting her skincare routine. She currently resides in the Toronto area. -
Reem Gaafar
Reem Gaafar is a Sudanese public health physician, researcher, writer and mother of three boys. She is published in both fiction and non-fiction circles, contributing to issues on public health and policy, society, racism and women’s rights. Her work has appeared in African Arguments, 500 Words Magazine, Teakisi Magazine, African Feminism, Andariya Magazine, International Health Policies and Health Systems Global.
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Her short story Light of the Desert was published in the anthology I Know Two Sudans (Gipping Press, UK). Her second short short Finding Descartes was published in the anthology Relations: African and Diaspora Voices (HarperVia). Her debut novel A Mouth Full of Salt (Saqi Books, Invisible Books) won The Island Prize in 2023, was li -
Francesca Ekwuyasi
Francesca Ekwuyasi is a writer and multidisciplinary artist from Lagos, Nigeria. Her work explores themes of faith, family, queerness, consumption, loneliness, and belonging.
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Ekwuyasi's debut novel, Butter Honey Pig Bread was longlisted for the 2020 Giller Prize and is a contender for CBC's 2021 Canada Reads competition.
Her writing has been published in Winter Tangerine Review, Brittle Paper, Transition Magazine, the Malahat Review, Visual Art News, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, GUTS magazine, the Puritan, forthcoming from Canadian Art, and elsewhere. Her story Ọrun is Heaven was longlisted for the 2019 Journey Prize.
Supported through the National Film Board's (NFB) Film Maker's Assistance Program (FAP) and the Fabienne Colas Foundation, her short do -
Ore Agbaje-Williams
ORE AGBAJE-WILLIAMS is a British-Nigerian writer and editor from North London who has written for gal—dem, Glamour UK and Wasafiri magazine. Her fiction writing has also been featured on Reflex Fiction. Her first novel, The Three of Us, was published by Jonathan Cape (UK), Putnam (US) and Penguin Random House Canada in May 2023.
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Peace Adzo Medie
Peace Adzo Medie is a Ghanaian writer and senior lecturer in gender and international politics at the University of Bristol in England. Prior to that she was a research fellow at the University of Ghana. She has published several short stories, and her book Global Norms and Local Action: The Campaigns to End Violence Against Women in Africa was published by Oxford University Press in 2020. She is an award-winning scholar and has been awarded several fellowships. She holds a PhD in public and international affairs from the University of Pittsburgh and a BA in geography from the University of Ghana. She was born in Liberia.
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Busayo Matuluko
Busayo Matuluko is a Black British-Nigerian nurse, YA/crossover mystery and romance writer, and an extremely opinionated, award-nominated BookToker.
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As someone who grew up reading many books without the representation she desired, she started writing to fulfill that. Her books are filled with vibrant Nigerian leads that talk too much, and she will always find a way to wriggle in two Black people falling in love.
When she's not writing, you can find her on Twitter at 3 a.m. tweeting her most random thoughts or binge-watching TV shows she's already watched about a thousand times. -
Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi
Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi was born and raised in Ibadan, Nigeria. A finalist for the 2009 PEN/Studzinski Award, her stories have been published in New Writing from Africa 2009, Ploughshares, and mentioned in The Best American Short Stories 2018. Her poetry has appeared in the Massachusetts Review, the Indiana Review and Wasafiri. She holds bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in computer science. Omolola is a Professor of Preventive and Social Medicine at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in South Los Angeles, where she teaches and conducts research on using biomedical informatics to reduce health disparities.
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Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions is her first book. It was selected as a New York Times Editors Choice, made T -
Chika Unigwe
Chika Unigwe was born in Enugu, Nigeria, and now lives in Turnhout, Belgium, with her husband and four children. She writes in English and Dutch.
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In April 2014 she was selected for the Hay Festival's Africa39 list of 39 Sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define future trends in African literature.
.
Unigwe holds a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and an MA from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. She also holds a PhD from the University of Leiden, The Netherlands, having completed a thesis entitled "In the shadow of Ala. Igbo women writing as an act of righting" in 2004.
Chika Unigwe is een dichter en schrijfster, geboren in Nigeria en wonende in België (z -
Lola Jaye
Lola Jaye is an author, registered psychotherapist and speaker who has penned six novels and a self-help book.
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She was born and raised in London, England and has lived in Nigeria and the United States. She currently works as a psychotherapist. She has written for, CNN, HuffPost, Essence and the BBC and also speaks on issues of mental health and racism. She has also appeared on national television, most recently discussing Covid 19 and mental wellbeing. Lola once gave a presentation on imposter syndrome – a subject close to her heart, because at times she’s unable to believe she’s an actual writer!
The Attic Child (Macmillan) is her first epic historical novel.
Find out more about Lola and what she’s been up to by visiting her website; www.l -
Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani
Adaobi Tricia Obinne Nwaubani (born in 1976) is a Nigerian novelist, humorist, essayist and journalist. Her debut novel, I Do Not Come to you by Chance, won the 2010 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book (Africa), a Betty Trask First Book award,and was named by the Washington Post as one of the Best Books of 2009. Nwaubani is the first contemporary African writer on the global stage to have got an international book deal while still living in her home country.
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(from Wikipedia) -
Yejide Kilanko
A writer of fiction and poetry, Kilanko’s debut novel, Daughters Who Walk This Path, a Canadian national bestseller, was longlisted for the 2016 Nigeria Literature Prize.
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Her work includes a novella, Chasing Butterflies (2015), two children’s picture books, There Is An Elephant In My Wardrobe (2019), and Juba and The Fireball (2020). Her short fiction is in the anthology, New Orleans Review 2017: The African Literary Hustle. Her latest novel, A Good Name, is available now
Kilanko lives in Ontario, Canada, where she practices as a social worker. -
Ukamaka Olisakwe
Ukamaka Olisakwe is a Nigerian novelist, short story writer and screenwriter. In 2014 she was chosen as one of Sub-Saharan Africa’s most promising writers under the age of 40 by Africa 39. She was born in Kano, Nigeria, and in 2016, was a resident at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program.
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Adesuwa O'man Nwokedi
The Writer, who became an Engineer, who became an Investment Banker, who became a Fertility Spokesperson, who became…a Writer.
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That has been the journey of A. T. Nwokedi, aka The Fertile Chick. A self confessed hopeless romantic, when she is not creating new characters, she devotes her time to creating memories with her husband and their three children. -
Abi Daré
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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Abi Daré grew up in Lagos, Nigeria and has lived in the UK for eighteen years. She studied law at the University of Wolverhampton and has an M.Sc. in International Project Management from Glasgow Caledonian University as well as an MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck University of London. The Girl with the Louding Voice won The Bath Novel Award for unpublished manuscripts in 2018 and was also selected as a finalist in 2018 The Literary Consultancy Pen Factor competition. Abi lives in Essex with her husband and two daughters, who inspired her to write her debut novel. -
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE grew up in Nigeria. Her work has been translated into more than fifty-five languages. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize; Half of a Yellow Sun, which was the recipient of the Women’s Prize for Fiction “Best of the Best” award; Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award; the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck and the essays We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions. Her most recent work is an essay about losing her father, Notes on Grief, and Mama’s Sleeping Scarf, a children’s book written as Nwa Grace-James. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she divides her time between the Unit
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Lizzie Damilola Blackburn
Lizzie Damilola Blackburn is a British-Nigerian writer, born in Peckham, who wants to tell the stories that she and her friends have longed for but never seen – romcoms 'where Cinderella is Black and no-one bats an eyelid'. In 2019 she won the Literary Consultancy Pen Factor Writing Competition with the early draft of Yinka, Where is your Huzband?, which she had been writing alongside juggling her job at Carers UK. She has been at the receiving end of the question in the title of her novel many times, and now lives with her husband in Milton Keynes.
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Fatima Bala
Fatima Bala is a lecturer, poet, and writer who lives in Canada with her family and a pet fish named Fishy. Her books have received starred reviews from The Los Angeles Tribune, London Post, and New York Weekly. She graduated from Algonquin College, Vancouver Island University, and Stanford, where she studied Tourism, Business Management, and International Women's Rights. She loves traveling, playing board games, and watching movies with unanticipated twists.
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Her Instagram account is @aka.fatima.bala -
Aiwanose Odafen
Born in Lagos, Nigeria, Aiwanose Odafen is an MFA fiction student at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. She has contributed to published non-fiction works and participated in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus Trust Writing Workshop. She was longlisted for the 2020 Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize.
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As a high school student, she was a gold and silver medalist in the National Mathematics Olympiad Competition. She graduated top of her class with a first-class degree in Accounting and is certified with the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, United Kingdom. She holds an MBA from the Said Business School, University of Oxford.
Prior to becoming a writer, Aiwanose worked as a consultant across industries, most recently, in the pu -
Busayo Matuluko
Busayo Matuluko is a Black British-Nigerian nurse, YA/crossover mystery and romance writer, and an extremely opinionated, award-nominated BookToker.
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As someone who grew up reading many books without the representation she desired, she started writing to fulfill that. Her books are filled with vibrant Nigerian leads that talk too much, and she will always find a way to wriggle in two Black people falling in love.
When she's not writing, you can find her on Twitter at 3 a.m. tweeting her most random thoughts or binge-watching TV shows she's already watched about a thousand times. -
Aiwanose Odafen
Born in Lagos, Nigeria, Aiwanose Odafen is an MFA fiction student at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. She has contributed to published non-fiction works and participated in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus Trust Writing Workshop. She was longlisted for the 2020 Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize.
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As a high school student, she was a gold and silver medalist in the National Mathematics Olympiad Competition. She graduated top of her class with a first-class degree in Accounting and is certified with the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, United Kingdom. She holds an MBA from the Said Business School, University of Oxford.
Prior to becoming a writer, Aiwanose worked as a consultant across industries, most recently, in the pu -
Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia
Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia is a lawyer, academic, and writer. She holds a doctorate in law from Dalhousie University and works in the areas of health, gender, and violence against women and children. Cheluchi divides her time between Lagos and Halifax.
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Chika Unigwe
Chika Unigwe was born in Enugu, Nigeria, and now lives in Turnhout, Belgium, with her husband and four children. She writes in English and Dutch.
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In April 2014 she was selected for the Hay Festival's Africa39 list of 39 Sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define future trends in African literature.
.
Unigwe holds a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and an MA from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. She also holds a PhD from the University of Leiden, The Netherlands, having completed a thesis entitled "In the shadow of Ala. Igbo women writing as an act of righting" in 2004.
Chika Unigwe is een dichter en schrijfster, geboren in Nigeria en wonende in België (z -
Yejide Kilanko
A writer of fiction and poetry, Kilanko’s debut novel, Daughters Who Walk This Path, a Canadian national bestseller, was longlisted for the 2016 Nigeria Literature Prize.
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Her work includes a novella, Chasing Butterflies (2015), two children’s picture books, There Is An Elephant In My Wardrobe (2019), and Juba and The Fireball (2020). Her short fiction is in the anthology, New Orleans Review 2017: The African Literary Hustle. Her latest novel, A Good Name, is available now
Kilanko lives in Ontario, Canada, where she practices as a social worker. -
Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani
Adaobi Tricia Obinne Nwaubani (born in 1976) is a Nigerian novelist, humorist, essayist and journalist. Her debut novel, I Do Not Come to you by Chance, won the 2010 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book (Africa), a Betty Trask First Book award,and was named by the Washington Post as one of the Best Books of 2009. Nwaubani is the first contemporary African writer on the global stage to have got an international book deal while still living in her home country.
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(from Wikipedia) -
Niq Mhlongo
Mhlongo was born in Midway-Chiawelo, Soweto, the seventh of nine children, and raised in Soweto. His father, who died when Mhlongo was a teenager, worked as a post-office sweeper. Mhlongo was sent to Limpopo Province, the province his mother came from, to finish high school. Initially failing his matriculation exam in October 1990,[1] Mhlongo completed his matric at Malenga High School in 1991. He studied African literature and political studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, gaining a BA in 1996. In 1997 he enrolled to study law there, transferring to the University of Cape Town the following year. In 2000 he discontinued university study to write his first novel, Dog Eat Dog.[2]
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He has been called, "one of the most high-spirited a -
Amma Darko
Amma Darko (born 1956) is an African novelist.
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She was born in Koforidua, Ghana, and grew up in Accra. She studied in Kumasi, where she received her diploma in 1980. Then she worked for the Science and Technology Center in Kumasi. During the eighties, she lived and worked for some time in Germany. She has since returned to Accra.
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Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, a Ugandan novelist and short story writer, has a PhD from Lancaster University. She is a lecturer in Creative Writing at Lancaster University and lives in Manchester with her husband Damian and son Jordan.
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Her first novel, Kintu, won the Kwani Manuscript Prize in 2013 and was longlisted for the 2014 Etisalat Prize for Literature. Her story Let's Tell This Story Properly won the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. In 2018 she was awarded a Windham-Campbell Prize in the fiction category. In 2021, her novel The First Woman won the Jhalak Prize.
Makumbi's writing is largely based on oral traditions. She realised that oral traditions were so broad and would be able to frame all her writing regardless of subject, form o -
Lizzie Damilola Blackburn
Lizzie Damilola Blackburn is a British-Nigerian writer, born in Peckham, who wants to tell the stories that she and her friends have longed for but never seen – romcoms 'where Cinderella is Black and no-one bats an eyelid'. In 2019 she won the Literary Consultancy Pen Factor Writing Competition with the early draft of Yinka, Where is your Huzband?, which she had been writing alongside juggling her job at Carers UK. She has been at the receiving end of the question in the title of her novel many times, and now lives with her husband in Milton Keynes.
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Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond
Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond's first book Powder Necklace (Washington Square Press 2010) is a YA tome loosely inspired by her experience attending a girls’ boarding school in the Central Region of Ghana, West Africa. Publishers Weekly called the book “a winning debut” while Library Journal recommended it "for readers who enjoyed Edwidge Danticat's Breath, Eyes, Memory or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus".
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In 2014, she was included among some of the most promising African authors under 39 in the Hay Festival-Rainbow Book Club Project Africa39: New Writing from Africa South of the Sahara (Bloomsbury). The Africa39 anthology was published in celebration of UNESCO's designation of Port Harcourt, Nigeria as 2014 World Book Capital. Most rece -
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE grew up in Nigeria. Her work has been translated into more than fifty-five languages. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize; Half of a Yellow Sun, which was the recipient of the Women’s Prize for Fiction “Best of the Best” award; Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award; the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck and the essays We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions. Her most recent work is an essay about losing her father, Notes on Grief, and Mama’s Sleeping Scarf, a children’s book written as Nwa Grace-James. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she divides her time between the Unit
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Helon Habila
Helon Habila was born in Nigeria in 1967. He studied literature at the University of Jos and taught at the Federal Polytechnic Bauchi, before moving to Lagos to work as a journalist. In Lagos he wrote his first novel, Waiting for an Angel, which won the Caine Prize in 2001. Waiting for an Angel has been translated into many languages including Dutch, Italian, Swedish, and French.
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In 2002, he moved to England to become the African Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia. After his fellowship he enrolled for a PhD in Creative Writing. His writing has won many prizes including the Commonwealth Writers Prize, 2003. In 2005-2006 he was the first Chinua Achebe Fellow at Bard College in New York. He is a contributing editor to the Virginia -
Iris Mwanza
Iris Mwanza is a Zambian-American author and gender equality advocate. Born and raised in Zambia, early exposure to inequality has been a driving force in her life - from becoming a lawyer, writing a Ph.D. dissertation on women and children’s rights, a career fighting for gender equality, and now a thriller with gender equality as its heart.
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Iris has spent an inordinate amount of time studying and has law degrees from Cornell University and the University of Zambia, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in International Relations from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Her day job is Deputy Director of the Women in Leadership team in the Gender Equality Division of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and her night job is to write. Her -
Joan Embola
Joan Embola is a UK-based Cameroonian-Nigerian Christian author who aims to share God's love one word at a time. She writes books about diverse characters whose hope-filled stories point to the sovereign love and goodness of God in our broken world. She is a qualified Physician Associate and also the founder of Love Qualified, a ministry dedicated to encouraging others to experience the sovereign love of the one true God who has qualified us to be His beloved ones. She is a passionate lover and teacher of God’s word, and she shares this passion on her YouTube channel, blog, and podcast. When she’s not writing or curled up with a book, you’ll find her watching movies, YouTube videos, or making memories with her family and friends.
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You can co -
Ama Asantewa Diaka
Ama Asantewa Diaka is a Ghanaian poet, storyteller, and spoken word artist who performs as Poetra Asantewa. She is the author of the chapbook, You Too Will Know Me, and the debut poetry collection, Woman, Eat Me Whole, and her poems and fiction have appeared in print and online. She recently completed an MFA at the Art Institute of Chicago. She lives in Ghana.
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Jyoti Patel
Jyoti Patel is a London-based author. She is a graduate of the University of East Anglia's Prose Fiction MA and winner of the 2021 #Merky Books New Writers' Prize. She was named as one of The Observer's Top 10 debut novelists for 2023. Her writing has previously been published as part of We Present's 'Literally' series and in the anthology for the 2022 Bristol Short Story Prize, for which she was shortlisted. 'The Things That We Lost' is her debut novel.
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Abi Daré
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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Abi Daré grew up in Lagos, Nigeria and has lived in the UK for eighteen years. She studied law at the University of Wolverhampton and has an M.Sc. in International Project Management from Glasgow Caledonian University as well as an MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck University of London. The Girl with the Louding Voice won The Bath Novel Award for unpublished manuscripts in 2018 and was also selected as a finalist in 2018 The Literary Consultancy Pen Factor competition. Abi lives in Essex with her husband and two daughters, who inspired her to write her debut novel. -
Sefi Atta
Sefi Atta was born 1964 in Lagos, Nigeria. She was educated there, in England and the United States. Her father Abdul-Aziz Atta was the Secretary to Federal Government and Head of the Civil Service until his death in 1972, and she was raised by her mother Iyabo Atta.
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A former chartered accountant and CPA, she is a graduate of the creative writing program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. Her short stories have appeared in journals like Los Angeles Review and Mississipi Review and have won prizes from Zoetrope and Red Hen Press. Her radio plays have been broadcast by the BBC. She is the winner of PEN International's 2004/2005 David TK Wong Prize and in 2006, her debut novel Everything Good Will Come was awarded the inaugural Wole Soyinka Pr -
Samuel Kolawole
Samuel Kọ́láwọlé was born and raised in Ibadan, Nigeria. His debut novel, The Road to the Salt Sea, won the 2025 Whiting Award for Fiction, was a finalist for the International Book Awards, was longlisted for the 2025 Aspen Words Literary Prize, and is currently a finalist for the 2025 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel.
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Other honors for his work include being a finalist for the Caine Prize for African Writing, the Graywolf Press Africa Prize, and the UK's The First Novel Prize.
He studied at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and holds a Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing with distinction from Rhodes University, South Africa; is a graduate of the MFA in Writing and Publishing at Vermont College of Fine Arts; and earned his PhD in -
Abubakar Adam Ibrahim
Abubakar Adam Ibrahim (born 1979) is a Nigerian creative writer and journalist.
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His debut short-story collection The Whispering Trees was longlisted for the inaugural Etisalat Prize for Literature in 2014, with the title story shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing.
Ibrahim has won the BBC African Performance Prize and the ANA Plateau/Amatu Braide Prize for Prose. He is a Gabriel Garcia Marquez Fellow (2013), a Civitella Ranieri Fellow (2015). In 2014 he was selected for the Africa39 list of writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define future trends in African literature, and was included in the anthology Africa39: New Writing from Africa South of the Sahara (ed. Ellah Allfrey). He was a mentor on the 2013 Writivism -
Elnathan John
Elnathan is a writer and lawyer living in spaces between in Nigeria and Germany. Mostly.
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His works have appeared in Hazlitt, Per Contra, Le Monde Diplomatique, FT and the Caine Prize for African Writing anthology 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016. He writes weekly political satire for the Nigerian newspaper Daily Trust on Sunday (and any other publication that PAYS him). Except you are The New Yorker, he considers it violence of unimaginable proportions to ask him to write for free. He has never won anything. This record was almost disrupted by the Caine Prize when they accidentally allowed his story on the shortlist in 2013 and again in 2015. Of course, both times, he did not win. He has been shortlisted and longlisted for a few other prizes, but -
Chigozie Obioma
Chigozie Obioma was born in Akure, Nigeria. His two novels, The Fishermen (2015) and An Orchestra of Minorities (2019) were shortlisted for The Booker Prize and have been translated into 30 languages. He has an LA Times book prize, the prestigious Internationalerpris, FT/Oppenheimer prize for fiction, an NAACP Image award and has been nominated for two dozen prizes for fiction. He was a judge of the Booker prize in 2021. He is a Distinguished writer in Residence at Wesleyan University, CT, the James E. Ryan Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and the program director of the Oxbelly Writers retreat. His third novel, The Road to the Country, will be published in 2024.
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Ukamaka Olisakwe
Ukamaka Olisakwe is a Nigerian novelist, short story writer and screenwriter. In 2014 she was chosen as one of Sub-Saharan Africa’s most promising writers under the age of 40 by Africa 39. She was born in Kano, Nigeria, and in 2016, was a resident at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program.
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Eloghosa Osunde
Eloghosa Osunde is a Nigerian writer and multidisciplinary artist.
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Adesuwa O'man Nwokedi
The Writer, who became an Engineer, who became an Investment Banker, who became a Fertility Spokesperson, who became…a Writer.
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That has been the journey of A. T. Nwokedi, aka The Fertile Chick. A self confessed hopeless romantic, when she is not creating new characters, she devotes her time to creating memories with her husband and their three children. -
Fatima Bala
Fatima Bala is a lecturer, poet, and writer who lives in Canada with her family and a pet fish named Fishy. Her books have received starred reviews from The Los Angeles Tribune, London Post, and New York Weekly. She graduated from Algonquin College, Vancouver Island University, and Stanford, where she studied Tourism, Business Management, and International Women's Rights. She loves traveling, playing board games, and watching movies with unanticipated twists.
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Her Instagram account is @aka.fatima.bala -
Abi Ishola-Ayodeji
Abi Ishola-Ayodeji is an Emmy award-winning producer, brand builder, and storyteller.
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Her debut novel, Patience is a Subtle Thief, was named one of BuzzFeed’s best books of May, 2022. -
Jendella Benson
Jendella Benson is a British-Nigerian writer and editor from Birmingham, now based in London. She is Head of Editorial at Black Ballad – the award-winning digital media platform and online community for black women in the UK and beyond. In her role, she has commissioned and edited hundreds of black women and non-binary journalists and writers from across the globe and worked with brands such as Dove, Comic Relief and Google.
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Jendella started her writing career as a columnist for Media Diversified, MTV UK, and Christian Today and has since written for The Guardian, The Sunday Times STYLE Magazine, The Telegraph and The Independent. She is the author of two novels – HOPE AND GLORY and ALL THAT WE’VE GOT – and her short story, Kindling, was pub -
Bisi Adjapon
Author of The Teller of Secrets. Top 10 Amazon Editors' Choice, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Pop Sugar, Ms. Magazine, ALA, American Booksellers Association, Globe and Mail, Mail and Guardian, BiblioLifestyle, Book Buzz. DAUGHTER IN EXILE will be released January 31, 2023
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Michael Donkor
Michael Donkor was born in London, to Ghanaian parents. He studied English at Wadham College at the University of Oxford, undertook a masters in creative writering at Royal Holloway, and now teaches English literature to secondary school students. In 2014, his writing won him a place on the Writers' Centre Norwich Inspires Scheme, where he received a year's mentoring from Daniel Hahn. Housegirl is his first novel, and many of the issues in it are close to his heart
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Ola Awonubi
Ola Nubi studied for an MA in Creative writing and Imaginative Practice at the University of East London and in 2008 her short story The Pink House, won first prize in the National words of colour competition and another short story of hers The Go- slow Journey, won the first prize in the fiction category for Wasafiri’s New writing prize 2009 and the Best Author CA Awards 2019.
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Some of her short stories feature on Afreada, Brittle Paper, Story Time, Woven Tale Press, TheSiren.co.uk and naijastories.com. She has had over 15 short stories published in various literary magazines, journals and on blogs and speaks at writing events.
Author of 7 books – Love’s Persuasion was published by Ankara Press – the Romance imprint of Cassava Press, Abuja. -
Sarah Ladipo Manyika
Sarah Ladipo Manyika was raised in Nigeria and has lived in Kenya, France, and England. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and for several years taught literature at San Francisco State University. Sarah currently serves on the boards of Hedgebrook and the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco. Sarah is a Patron of the Etisalat Prize for Literature and host to OZY’s video series “Write.” Her second novel Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun was shortlisted for the 2016 Goldsmiths Prize.
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Julie Iromuanya
Julie Iromuanya is a writer, scholar, and educator. Born and raised in the American Midwest, she is the daughter of Igbo Nigerian immigrants. Her creative writing has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Passages North, the Cream City Review, and the Tampa Review, among other journals. Her scholarly-critical work most recently appears in Converging Identities: Blackness in the Modern Diaspora (Carolina Academic Press).
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She has been shortlisted for several prizes, including the Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest, the Glimmer Train Very Short Fiction and Family Matters contests, the Rona Jaffe Foundation fellowship, and the Miles Morland Writing Scholarship.
Iromuanya earned her B.A. at the University of Central Florida, and her M.A. and Ph.D. at th -
Zaynab Alkali
Her Islamic family came from a village in Borno State, Nigeria, but moved to a Christian village in Gongola State, where she was brought up. She graduated from Bayero University, Kano, with a BA in 1973, obtaining an MA in African Literature in English in 1979. The first woman novelist from Northern Nigeria, she is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Maiduguri, Borno State.
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(from Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby) -
Yewande Omotoso
YEWANDE OMOTOSO was born in Barbados and grew up in Nigeria, moving to South Africa with her family in 1992. Trained as an Architect she is the author of Bom Boy (Modjaji Books, 2011) which won the South African Literary Award for First-Time Published Author and was shortlisted for the South African Sunday Times Fiction Prize. In 2013 she was a finalist in the the inaugural, pan-African Etisalat Fiction Prize. Her second novel The Woman Next Door (Chatto and Windus, 2016) was longlisted for the Bailey's Women Prize and shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award. An Unusual Grief (Cassava Republic, 2022) is Omotoso's third novel. Omotoso works as a Storytelling Advisor with Greenpeace International and lives in Johannesburg.
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Erhu Kome
Erhu Kome is an Urhobo writer of speculative fiction and sometimes normal stories. She is also the premier female Nigerian author of bizarro fiction. She grew up in Benin city and is from the Urhobo tribe, so she has eaten and knows how to cook some of the most delicious foods in the world. She loves anime, cannot stop watching Bob's Burgers, and TV shows that has Eric Kripke involved in the making.
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Eghosa Imasuen
Nigerian novelist, medical doctor, Warri boy, father and husband. Latest novel is Fine Boys.
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Miracle Emeka-Nkwor
Miracle Emeka-Nkwor was born and raised in the Garden city, Port Harcourt. She is a graduate of Biochemistry from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and has always likened herself to an overflowing drum of creativity. When she isn’t sketching designs, drafting patterns and bent over a sewing machine, her nose is buried in the pages of a good book.
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What Happened to Janet Uzor is her debut novel.