Nigerian author Chukwuebuka Ibeh, who used to be a staff writer on Brittle Paper, has some good news. Ahead of the 2024 publication of his debut novel Blessings, he has signed four additional international book deals and secured a film agent.

Ibeh’s Blessings is a coming-of-age story that follows a young gay man in Nigeria longing for love, acceptance, and queer joy. However, the passing of the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act in Nigeria in 2014 shows how politics can impact the ordinary lives of queer people. Read our book news post here for more information.

While the rights were already sold to Isabel Wall at Viking UK last November, the book has been acquired by Doubleday in the U.S., Viking Canada, Fischer in Germany, and Urano in Spain, just this month. Blessings is set to publish in the U.S. and the UK in 2024.

The TV/film rights for the book goes to The Artists Partnership with Penni Killick as the film agent. We are very excited to see how Ibeh’s fantastic storytelling shows up on the big screen and the characters come to life!

Chukwuebuka Ibeh is from Port Harcourt, Nigeria. His writing has appeared in McSweeneys, The New England Review of Books and Lolwe, amongst others, and he was a staff writer at Brittle Paper. Ibeh was the Runner-up for the 2021 J.F Powers Prize for Fiction, a finalist for the Gerald Kraak Award and Morland Foundation Scholarship and was profiled as one of the “Most Promising New Voices of Nigerian Fiction” in Electric Literature. He is currently completing his MFA at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

Congrats to Brittle Paper alumnus Ibeh on his much-awaited debut novel!