The finalists for the 61st Annual Nebula Awards were announced by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA), and we are thrilled to see three writers from the African and African diaspora literary community among those in the running. Nnedi Okorafor is a finalist for Best Novel, Wole Talabi for Best Novella, and Somto Ihezue for Best Novelette.

Okorafor’s Death of the Author has been one of the most talked-about books of the past year and recently won the coveted NAACP Image Award. The novel follows Zelunjo “Zelu” Onyenezi-Onyedele, a disabled Nigerian American woman who, after losing her teaching job and facing yet 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. Published by Morrow in the US and Gollancz in the UK, it was named a TIME Magazine Must-Read Book of 2025 and is widely regarded as some of Okorafor’s finest work. This is not the Nigerian-American writer’s first time on the Nebula ballot, she is one of the most decorated figures in speculative fiction and the inaugural winner of Brittle Paper’s African Literary Person of the Year Award. A win here would add another landmark to an already extraordinary career.

Wole Talabi, the Nigerian engineer-turned-writer whose novel Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon earned him a World Fantasy Award nomination and a place on the Washington Post’s Top Ten Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of 2023, is a finalist for his novella Descent, published in Clarkesworld in May 2025. Set in the Sauútiverse shared world that Talabi helped create, the novella follows Gwaato, the adopted child of a geodynamics genius, who embarks on a mission to map the unexplored lower regions of a raging planet of sonic storms and discovers hard truths about knowledge, ambition, and parental expectation along the way. Talabi has described the story as being, at its heart, about traditional African epistemology and the limits of all knowledge. He is also a finalist for the BSFA Award for Best Shorter Fiction for the same work. Both nominations arrive as anticipation builds for his forthcoming novel The Fist of Memory, due from DAW Books in October 2026.

Somto Ihezue, a Nigerian-Igbo writer, editor, and filmmaker currently completing an MFA in creative writing at the University of Maryland, rounds out the trio with his novelette We Begin Where Infinity Ends, published in the February 2025 issue of Clarkesworld. A solarpunk romance set against a backdrop of engineers, fireflies, and found community, the story follows Naeto, River, and Gozi as they take to the streets at night on a mission to save the fireflies bound together by love, technology, and the tender urgency of youth. Ihezue’s work has previously appeared in venues including Uncanny, Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and his stories have been shortlisted for the British Fantasy, Nommo, and Utopia Awards.

Winners will be announced on Saturday, June 6 at the 61st Annual Nebula Awards Conference in Chicago. Voting is open to SFWA members from now until April 15, 2026. Congratulations to Nnedi, Wole, and Somto, we are rooting for you!