Akwaeke Emezi

Akwaeke Emezi is a multidisciplinary artist and writer. They were born in Umuahia and raised in Aba, Nigeria. 

Emezi is the author of the poetry collections Content Warning: Everything (Copper Canyon Press, 2022); You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty (Atria Books, 2022); Pet (Random House Children’s Books, 2021), a finalist for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, a Walter Honor Book, and a Stonewall Honor Book; Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir (Riverhead Books, 2021), winner of the 2022 Stonewall Book Award for Nonfiction; The Death of Vivek Oji (Riverhead Books, 2020), which was a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the PEN/Jean Stein Award; Freshwater (Grove Press, 2018), which was named a New York Times Notable Book and shortlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award, the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, the Lambda Literary Award, and the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. 

Selected as a “5 Under 35” honoree by the National Book Foundation, Emezi is the recipient of several honors and fellowships, including a Global Arts Fund grant in 2017 for their video art, which premiered in 2018 at Gavin Brown’s enterprise in Harlem.