Nnedi Okorafor and Lọlá Shónẹ́yìn.

Nigerian publisher Ouida Books has launched a new Africanfuturist imprint named Phoenix, spearheaded by Nnedi Okorafor and Lọlá Shónẹ́yìn.

Led by the two prominent authors, Phoenix is dedicating to publishing African speculative fiction and fantasy (Africanfuturism and Africanjujuism). The imprint will be managed by Ms Omotoke Solarin-Sodara.

Nnedi Okorafor is a Nigerian-American writer, well known for crafting remarkable Africanfuturist stories. She won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 2011 with her debut Who Fears Death. Okorafor’s 2015 novella Binti won the Hugo and Nebula Awards, while her 2017 YA novel Akata Warrior won the Locus and Lodestar Awards. She also won the prestigious Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature for her 2005 YA novel Zahrah the Windseeker. Her science fiction comic series LaGuardia won the Hugo Award, while Shuri is a Nommo Award winner.

Lọlá Shónẹ́yìn is a Nigerian poet and author. She is best known for her debut novel The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives (2010), which won the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award and the Ken Saro-Wiwa Prose Prize. In 2014, she was on the Hay Festival’s Africa39 list of 39 Sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define trends in African literature. In 2017, she was named Brittle Paper’s African Literary Person of the Year.

See the stunning logo below:

 

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We are so thrilled that Okorafor and Shónẹ́yìn have teamed up to help young authors get their books published under this new imprint! Get ready to read some brilliant Africanfuturist fiction coming your way in the next few years!