We are very excited to announce our ICFA 44 Guest of Honor, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, and our ICFA 44 Guest Scholar, Dr. Isiah Lavender III!
ICFA 44 Guest of Honor – Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki
Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki is an African speculative fiction writer and editor in Nigeria. He has won the Nommo award for Best Speculative Fiction by an African twice, both for Short Story and Novella, as well as the Otherwise and British Fantasy Awards. He is the first African to have won the Nebula Award for Best Novelette with his climate fiction story O2 Arena, for which he is also a BSFA, BFA and Nommo Award finalist, and the first African to be a Hugo Award Best Novelette finalist. He is the first African editor to be a finalist in the Hugo Award Best Editor categories and the first BIPOC editor to be a finalist in both the Hugo Award Editing and Fiction categories in the same year. He has been a finalist for the WFA, Locus, BSFA, Sturgeon, and This Is Horror Awards. His fiction and non-fiction have appeared in and are forthcoming in Tordotcom, Asimov’s, Uncanny Magazine, Apex Magazine, Strange Horizons, Galaxy’s Edge, and NBC, among other venues. He edited and published the first ever Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction anthology, a Hugo, WFA, Locus, and BFA finalist, and the Pan-African non-fiction anthology, Bridging Worlds: Global Conversations on Creating Pan-African Speculative Literature in a Pandemic. He co-edited the BFA-winning Dominion anthology and the Africa Risen anthology, which has a starred review from Publishers Weekly. He guest-edited the collections window of Interstellar Flight Press and has slush read for Podcastle, Strange Horizons, Cosmic Roots, Eldritch Shores, and other publications. He is the founder of Jembefola Press and the Emeka Walter Dinjos Memorial Award for Disability in Speculative Fiction. He co-organized the Discon 3 African stream and 2021 Nommo Award ceremony, and is a Guest of Honour at the 2022 Can*Con. He is the first African-born Black writer and the youngest writer to be Guest of Honor at the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts. You can find him on Twitter https://twitter.com/penprince_ and on his website https://odekpeki.com.
Please follow these links to immerse yourself in the works of Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki:
O2 Arena: https://apex-magazine.com/short-fiction/o2-arena/
Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction: https://jembefola.com/the-L-best-african-speculative-fiction-2021-by-oghenechovwe-donald-ekpeki/
Bridging Worlds: https://jembefola.com/bridging-worlds-global-conversations-on-creating-pan-african-speculative-literature-in-a-pandemic-cover-and-toc-reveal/
The Emeka Walter Dinjos Memorial Award For Disability In Speculative Fiction: https://file770.com/announcing-the-emeka-walter-dinjos-memorial-award-for-disability-in-speculative-fiction/
Discon 3 African Stream: https://file770.com/new-african-program-stream-distinguishes-disconiii-world-science-fiction-convention/
Publishers Weekly starred review: https://www.publishersweekly.com/9781250833006
Africa Risen pre-order: https://publishing.tor.com/africarisen-shereereneethomas/9781250833006/
“Destiny Delayed” in the May/June issue of Asimov’s – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Kl0Iks1M8xk-zMC-FE3Xl3FsNf8Ce4f9/view?usp=drivesdk
Guest Scholar – Dr. Isiah Lavender III
Isiah Lavender III is Sterling-Goodman Professor of English at the University of Georgia, where he researches and teaches courses in African American literature and science fiction. His books include Race in American Science Fiction (Indiana UP, 2011), Black and Brown Planets: The Politics of Race in Science Fiction and Dis-Orienting Planets: Racial Representations of Asia in Science Fiction (UP of Mississippi, 2014 and 2017 respectively), Afrofuturism Rising: The Literary Prehistory of a Movement (Ohio State UP, 2019), and Literary Afrofuturism in the Twenty-First Century (Ohio State UP, 2020), co-edited with Lisa Yaszek. His interview collection Conversations with Nalo Hopkinson is forthcoming from UP of Mississippi in early 2023. He is currently hard at work on The Routledge Handbook of CoFuturisms, co-edited with Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, Grace Dillon, and Taryne Jade Taylor as well as his manuscript-in-progress Critical Race Theory and Science Fiction. If you would like to know more about Dr. Lavender, check out https://narrativeencounters.aau.at/how-reading-shapes-us-isiah-lavender/
The title of Dr. Lavender’s ICFA Guest Scholar presentation shall be “Imaginary Amendments and Executive Orders: Race in United States Science Fiction.”
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