Akwaeke Emezi

Akwaeke Emezi is a Nigerian-born writer and visual artist, born in Umuahia, Abia State, and raised in Aba. They moved to the United States at sixteen for college and later earned an MPA from New York University.

Their debut novel, Freshwater (2018), draws on Igbo cosmology and was nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction; it won the Otherwise Award and the Nommo Award.

Other books include the young adult novel Pet (2019), the novel The Death of Vivek Oji (2020), the memoir Dear Senthuran (2021), the young adult novel Bitter (2022), the romance You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty (2022), and Son of the Morning (2025). Emezi is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns.