Nnedi Okorafor, one of the most celebrated voices in Africanfuturism, is coming to Madison this Tuesday, April 7, for a free public conversation presented in partnership with the Wisconsin Book Festival. The event, part of the Humanities Without Boundaries series, runs from 7:00 to 8:30 PM at Madison Central Public Library (Community Rooms 301 & 302) and is free and open to the public.

The conversation will be moderated by Ainehi Edoro, Brittle Paper editor and Vilas Early Career and Constellations Mellon-Morgridge Professor in UW-Madison’s English Department. Edoro and Okorafor will explore the author’s recent and upcoming works alongside her creative process, a meeting of two of the most influential figures in African literary culture today.

The event is part of a broader moment for Okorafor’s novel Death of the Author, which has been selected as the centerpiece of the 2025–2026 Great World Texts in Wisconsin program, a statewide initiative bringing the book into high school classrooms across Wisconsin. The novel recently won the Outstanding Literary Work — Fiction award at the 57th NAACP Image Awards, Okorafor’s first win in the award’s history.

Death of the Author follows Zelu, a disabled Nigerian writer who, after being fired and rejected by publishers, writes a futuristic novel about androids and AI that transforms her career. The book has been celebrated as a masterwork of metafiction that is at once deeply personal and expansively imaginative.

Following the conversation, books will be sold on-site by A Room of One’s Own bookstore and will be available for signing. Madison readers won’t want to miss this rare opportunity to see two of African literature’s sharpest minds in the same room.