Nnedi Okorafor. Goodreads

Nigeria’s Nnedi Okorafor is on a roll! Barely two weeks since bagging an Eisner Award, Okarafor wins the coveted Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story or Comic for her graphic novel LaGuardia. She wins the award with illustrators Tana Ford and James Devlin

She shared the news on Twitter:

This is a second Hugo win for Nnedi who became the first Nigerian to win the award, in 2016, for her novella Binti.

First awarded in 1953, the Hugo Award is annually conferred by the World Science Fiction Society to highlight the best works of science fiction published in the preceding year. Previous winners include Ursula K. Le Guin, Nail Gaiman and J.K Rowling. The 2020 ceremony was hosted by Game of Thrones author and good friend of Okorafor George R. R. Martin.

In her virtual acceptance speech, Nnedi said:

LaGuardia is a narrative about immigration, identity, belonging, love, birth, rebirth, so so much. And it’s about aliens. I’d been growing the story for about six years in my head. It was a joy to work on. And everyone on the LaGuardia team brought a powerful energy to this and I think this really comes through. What a time and such an honor for this story to win both a Hugo and an Eisner Award.

LaGuardia tells an Africanfuturist story of a Nigerian-American doctor Future Nwafor Chukwuebuka and her illegal alien plant named Letme Live in futuristic NYC.

Congrats Nnedi Okorafor!