The finalists for the 46th Los Angeles Times Book Prizes were announced this week, and we are delighted to see four writers from the African and African diaspora literary world in the running. Nnedi Okorafor and Adam Oyebanji are both finalists in the Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction category, Ghanaian-British writer, curator and broadcaster Ekow Eshun is a finalist in the Biography category, and Sierra Leonean-American poet and author Hannah V. Sawyerr is a finalist in the Young Adult Literature category.

Okorafor’s Death of the Author has been one of the most celebrated books of the past year, named a TIME Magazine Must-Read Book of 2025 and widely praised as some of her finest work yet. The novel follows Zelunjo “Zelu” Onyenezi-Onyedele, a disabled Nigerian American woman who, after losing her teaching job and facing another rejection letter, writes a wildly ambitious science fiction novel about androids and AI in a post-human world and watches it catapult her into literary stardom. Structured as a novel within a novel, Death of the Author is a metafictional exploration of fame, family, Africanfuturism, and what it means to lose control of the story you created. Oyebanji’s Esperance, meanwhile, is a genre-blending thriller that opens with an impossible murder in a Chicago apartment. A father and son found drowned in seawater, miles from any ocean, the story unfolds into a gripping mystery rooted in racism, intergenerational trauma, and Afrofuturist speculation. Of Scottish and Nigerian descent, Oyebanji has been longlisted for the British Science Fiction Association’s Best Novel award, and Esperance has earned starred reviews from Booklist, BookPage, and Library Journal.

Ekow Eshun’s The Strangers: Five Extraordinary Black Men and the Worlds That Made Them is a genre-defying work of creative nonfiction that inhabits the inner lives of five pioneering Black men (actor and playwright Ira Aldridge, Arctic explorer Matthew Henson, political philosopher Frantz Fanon, civil rights leader Malcolm X, and footballer Justin Fashanu) each a trailblazer in his field, and each haunted by the condition of being a stranger in the world that claimed him. Blending biography, fiction, essay, and historical record, Eshun’s book is as much a meditation on Black masculinity and the psychological toll of perpetual otherness as it is a set of individual portraits. Booker Prize-winning author Bernardine Evaristo called it thrilling, genre-defying, and outstanding, while Ben Okri described it as a future Black classic.

Rounding out the quartet is Hannah V. Sawyerr, the Sierra Leonean-American poet and former Baltimore Youth Poet Laureate whose sophomore novel Truth Is has already had a remarkable awards run. It was a finalist for the 2025 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature before landing on the LA Times list. Told entirely in free verse, journal entries, and poetry prompts, Truth Is follows seventeen-year-old Truth Bangura, an aspiring slam poet who, after deciding to have an abortion, watches a personal performance go viral and must suddenly reckon with her most private choice becoming very public business. Starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Booklist, and School Library Journal have praised it as unforgettable and emotionally resonant.

The 46th LA Times Book Prizes recognise titles across 13 categories, from fiction and poetry to science and technology and young adult literature. The ceremony on April 17 is open to the public and kicks off the two-day Festival of Books on April 18–19. We will be watching closely and cheering all four writers on. Winners will be announced on April 17 at USC’s Bovard Auditorium, as part of the prelude to the annual LA Times Festival of Books.