Nigerian writer, Ani Kayode Somtochukwu has been awarded The 2024 Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction for his novel And Then He Sang a Lullaby.
And Then He Sang a Lullaby tells the compelling story of two gay men who find each other in Nigeria and are determined to love despite all that stands in their way. August is a straight-passing track star who has left Enugu, his overbearing sisters, and an apathetic father to find himself at the University of Nigeria Nsukka.
Ani Kayode Somtochukwu is an award-winning Nigerian writer and queer liberation activist. His work interrogates themes of queer identity, resistance and liberation and has appeared in literary magazines across Africa, Europe, Asia and North America. His work has received wide recognition, having been longlisted for the 2017 Awele Creative Trust Prize and the 2020 Afritondo Short Story Prize. He was shortlisted for the 2017 Erbacce Prize for Poetry, the 2020 ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award and the 2020 Toyin Falola Prize. The manuscript for this novel was awarded the 2021 James Currey Prize for African Literature and also won him the 2024 Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction.
The Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction recognizes outstanding first novels or story collections by LGBTQ authors in which the winner goes home with $1000 in prize money.
Congratulations Somtochukwu!
Bakare Oluwatobiloba
I write to educate, motivate and define history with literature. Just being me!
