Akwaeke Emezi will join Hub City as Writer-In-Residence this summer. Her residency will run from mid-June to mid-August.
Akwaeke is an Igbo/Tamil fiction writer based in liminal spaces. She was born in Umuahia and raised in Aba, Nigeria. Her work moves through spaces of psychosexual dislocation, traditional spiritual practice, loss and death, and confronts the intricacies of navigating humanity. Akwaeke’s writing has been published in Sable Literary Magazine, Golly Magazine, Specter Magazine, as well as the upcoming 2015 Caine Prize Anthology.
In addition to fiction writing, Akwaeke is also a talented filmmaker. Her experimental short UDUDEAGU won the Audience Award for Best Short Experimental at the 2014 BlackStar Film Festival and has screened in over thirteen countries across the world. She also holds a Masters in Public Administration from NYU and has previously worked in the nonprofit sector.
While in Spartanburg, she will work on a novel in progress. The book is an expansion of her short story Femimo (published in Sable Literary Magazine) and addresses the conflict and dislocation of having two selves when one has lived abroad before returning home, following three main characters as they attempt to resolve this dissonance. As the first-person narration shifts between each of the three, we are given a powerful look at what it’s like to be navigating space and identity in the underbelly of a modern-day Lagos, marked by religion, familial expectations, and personal moral standards.
She is coming to Spartanburg from Syracuse, NY where she is enrolled in the MFA program at Syracuse University. Her work can be accessed via her website: www.azemezi.com.