’Pemi Aguda is from Lagos, Nigeria. She has an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan.
Her writing has won awards such as: a 2022 O. Henry Prize, a Nommo Award for Short Story, a Henfield Prize, a Tyson Prize for Fiction, Hopwood Awards (for Novel, Short Fiction, Non-Fiction and Drama), and the 2015 Writivism Prize. She received a work-study scholarship from Bread Loaf Writers Conference in 2018, an Octavia Butler Memorial Scholarship from the Carl Brandon Society to attend the Clarion Workshop in 2019, as well as a 2019 Juniper Summer Workshop scholarship. She was a 2020 Aspen Words Emerging Writer Fellow, and her novel-in-progress won the 2020 Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award. She is a 2021 Fiction Fellow with the Miami Book Fair, and a 2022 MacDowell fellow.
W. W. Norton will publish her story collection, Ghostroots, and her novel, The Suicide Mothers. She is represented by Renée Zuckerbrot of MMQ Lit.

photo by ‘Pemi | art on front page by Mobolaji Ogunrosoye