Ukamaka Olisakwe

Ukamaka Olisakwe is an assistant professor of fiction and screenwriting. She lives in Ogden, Utah.

In 2014, she was named one of the continent’s most promising writers under the age of 40 by the UNESCO World Book Capital for the Africa39 project. In 2016, she was awarded an Honorary Fellowship in Writing at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program, and was a resident fellow at the City of Asylum in Pittsburgh. In 2018, she won the Vermont College of Fine Arts’ Emerging Writer Scholarship. In 2019, she was shortlisted for the Brittle Paper Award for Creative Nonfiction. In 2021, she won the SpringNG Women Authors Prize for her novel, Ogadinma. In 2022, she was named runner-up for the Gerald Kraak Prize. And in 2024, she was named finalist for the Nommo Best Novel Award for her novel, Don’t Answer When They Call Your Name.

A finalist for the Miles Morland Writing Scholarship, her works have appeared in the New York Times, Granta, Guernica, Longreads, The Rumpus, Catapult, Google Arts & Culture, The Johannesburg Review of Books, and more.

Ukamaka is the author of Ogadinma (2020) and Don’t Answer When They Call Your Name (2023). She is currently writing a TV series, Agoodjie, for Canal+ / StudioCanal.

She is also the Founder and Editor in Chief of Isele Magazine.