BIOGRAPHY

AKWAEKE is an artist based in liminal spaces. Born and raised in Nigeria, their work spans literature, music, film, and visual art. After performing at Afropunk Brooklyn in 2023 for their first live show, AKWAEKE's debut EP Stop Dying, You Were Very Expensive! drops on March 8, 2024. Their eighth book Little Rot will be published on June 18, 2024 from Riverhead Books. 

AKWAEKE moved to Brooklyn in the early 2010s as a poet and filmmaker, with their short film Ududeagu winning Best Short Experimental at the 2014 BlackStar Film Festival. They crashed into the literary scene in 2018 with their seminal debut novel Freshwater and published a total of seven books in four years, including the instant New York Times bestseller The Death Of Vivek Oji and National Book Award finalist Pet. Their romance novel You Made A Fool Of Death With Your Beauty was a 2023 NAACP Image Award nominee and the screen adaptation sold in a seven-figure deal to Amazon Studios, with AKWAEKE executive producing alongside Michael B. Jordan's Outlier Society.

Lauded as 'one of our greatest living writers' (Shondaland) and 'a once-in-a-generation voice' (Vulture), they are represented by UTA, Mohamed Kheir at Objectively Good Media, and Jacqueline Ko at The Wylie Agency.


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