francesca ekwuyasi
francesca ekwuyasi is a storyteller and multidisciplinary artist from Lagos, Nigeria. Her debut novel Butter Honey Pig Bread won the 2022 Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers, was a finalist for CBC’s Canada Reads, and was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, a Lambda Literary Award, a Governor General’s Literary Award, the Amazon Canada First Novel Award, and the ReLit Award. ekwuyasi’s short fiction, essays, and criticism have appeared in Winter Tangerine Review, Brittle Paper, and Transition Magazine, among other publications. Her short story Ọrun is Heaven was longlisted for the 2019 Journey Prize and An Immortal Woman was shortlisted for the Yolk Magazine’s 2024 Montreal Fiction Prize. She has held residencies at the Khyber Centre for the Arts, ARTEXTE, the Banff Centre for the Arts, and Centre for Arts Tapes. ekwuyasi lives in Halifax.
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Jury Citation
“It is clear from the very first sentences that francesca ekwuyasi’s Butter Honey Pig Bread is an ambitious and assured debut. What is extraordinary, though, is that from those first sentences the novel keeps expanding in both breadth and depth like a slowly unfurling universe. ekwuyasi gives us not one protagonist but three, each their own galaxy of complexity. This work is filled with many pleasures, by turns sensuous and sensual, magical and mystical, but also deadly serious in its exploration of harm and reconciliation. A profound work of love, Butter Honey Pig Bread reminds us that the best novels can hold what cannot be contained.” — 2022 Dayne Ogilvie Prize Jury (Billy-Ray Belcourt, Samra Habib, and Zoey Leigh Peterson)Juror History
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Works Recognized by WT