Nigerian author Pemi Aguda secures a coveted spot on the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction longlist for her debut novel, Ghostroots published by W. W. Norton & Company.
A debut collection of stories set in a hauntingly reimagined Lagos where characters vie for freedom from ancestral ties. Pemi Aguda opens her collection of twelve stories with the chilling tale of a woman who uncannily resembles her sinister, deceased grandmother. When the woman shows a capacity for deadly violence, she wonders—can evil be genetic, passed from generation to generation?
Set in Lagos, Nigeria, Aguda’s stories unfold against a spectral cityscape where the everyday business of living—the birth of a baby, a market visit, a conversation between mothers and daughters—is charged with an air of supernatural menace. Evocative, strange, and yet familiar, “the speculative conceits of these stories are elegantly balanced with the gorgeous fullness of human emotion, all the hunger and longing and fear and delight of being a human in the world” (Lauren Groff).
Pemi Aguda is a Nigerian writer known for her short stories and debut collection Ghostroots (2024). Her work often explores complex themes surrounding motherhood, identity, and the supernatural. Ghostroots, which includes previously-published stories such as Breastmilk and The Hollow, was a finalist for the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction and received critical acclaim for its unifying themes and narrative cohesion.
Aguda’s stories have been widely recognized, earning multiple accolades, including an O’Henry Award in 2022 for Breastmilk and again in 2023 for The Hollow. Additionally, Breastmilk was shortlisted for the 2024 Caine Prize for African Writing.
The PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, awarded annually by the PEN/Faulkner Foundation to the authors of the year’s best works of fiction by living Americans, Green Card holders or permanent residents revealed the shortlist for the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction will be announced in March, with the winner revealed in April.
Read more about the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Longlist
Bakare Oluwatobiloba
I write to educate, motivate and define history with literature. Just being me!
