Award-winning Nigerian writer and editor Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki has signed a major publishing deal with Caezik SF & Fantasy, an imprint of Arc Manor, for his debut novel Birth of Orisha — the first book in a new trilogy titled The Orisha Cycle. The deal was acquired by publisher Shahid Mahmud, with Lezli Robyn as editor.
Arc Manor and its imprints have published the works of Joe Haldeman, Larry Niven, Seanan McGuire, Andre Norton, Mike Resnick, Harry Turtledove, Kevin J Anderson, Yaroslav Barsukov, Robert Silverberg, Jules Vernes, HG Wells, Robert Heinlein and others.
Birth of Orisha is set in a far-future, post-apocalyptic Africa, where nuclear devastation has nearly wiped out humanity. The remnants of a once-great people must battle radiation, mutation, and their own evolving societies as they struggle to rise from the ashes or be buried by them. Drawing deeply from Yoruba cosmology and African spiritual traditions, the novel blends science fiction, fantasy, dystopia, and horror, while exploring questions of divinity, identity, and survival.
The trilogy introduces the literary concept of Afropantheology — a genre label coined by Ekpeki and Joshua Uchenna Omenga to provide a philosophical and creative framework for African spirituality in speculative fiction.
The novel will delight fans of NK Jemisin’s The Inheritance Trilogy, Nnedi Okorafor’s Who
Fears Death, Tomi Adeyemi’s Legacy of Orisha, Marlon James’s Dark Star Trilogy, God of
War, Black Panther, The 100, etc.
Ekpeki, who has been described as one of the most innovative voices in contemporary SFF, has received high praise from leading authors. Pat Cadigan called him “one of the most important new voices in the field,” while P. Djèlí Clark described him as “a brilliant and witty storyteller whose work is reshaping the genre.”
About Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki
Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki is the most awarded African-born SFF writer, editor, and publisher, with most of his awards being racial or continental firsts. He’s written, edited, and published some of the most awarded works, authors, and scholars of Black SFF, numbering in the hundreds, in collections, anthologies, and magazines, which have garnered laurels like the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, British Science Fiction, British Fantasy, World Fantasy, NAACP Image Awards, the Otherwise, Sturgeon, Nommo, Ignyte, Sidewise, This Is Horror Awards, the Caine Prize, made the LeVar Burton Podcast, and been mentioned in The Guardian, Washington Post, NBC, BBC, and others.
He is the first African-born writer to have won the Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards, and the first Black person to have won the Asimov’s Reader’s Award. He’s the first African-born writer to be a finalist in the Hugo Award, the first Black person alongside Sheree Renée Thomas to have been a finalist in the Hugo Award Best Editor, Short Form category, and the first and only BIPOC — and one of only five people — to be nominated for the Hugo Award editing and fiction categories in the same year. He’s also won the Otherwise, Nommo, and British Fantasy Awards, and been a finalist in the Sturgeon, British Science Fiction, NAACP Image Awards, and others.
He’s the youngest person ever and was the first Black man to be a Guest of Honour at the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts, following past guests like the Nobel laureates Isaac Bashevis Singer and Doris Lessing, and authors like Ursula K. Le Guin and Stephen King. There, he coined the genre label “Afropantheology” to create a literary framework for African spirituality.
His works have been translated into multiple languages, including Chinese, Persian, Czech, Italian, Bengali, Dutch, and others.
He was the first African to be elected to the executive boards of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association and the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, where he currently serves as the Virtual Conference Coordinator. He delivered the keynote speech at the Center for African Literature and Cultures, Jadavpur University, India, and has further been a Guest of Honour at CanCon in Canada, Stranimondi, the Italian Science Fiction Convention, and invited to other conferences in Europe, Asia, and North America.
He’s listed alongside Octavia Butler, Samuel Delany, Pauline Hopkins, George Schuyler, N.K. Jemisin, and Colson Whitehead in the National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian, for his contributions to Afrofuturism and Black Literature.
Congratulations, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki!
Bakare Oluwatobiloba
I write to educate, motivate and define history with literature. Just being me!
