Chinelo Onwualu is a Nigerian writer, editor, and journalist living in Toronto. She teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. She’s the co-host of Griots and Galaxies, a podcast about African Speculative fiction and the people who write it. She’s also co-founder of Omenana, a magazine of African Speculative Fiction. She was chief spokesperson for the African Speculative Fiction Society. And she was a graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop, which she attended as the recipient of the Octavia E. Butler Scholarship.
Her short stories have been featured in Slate.com, Uncanny, Strange Horizons, The Kalahari Review and Brittle Paper magazines, and several award-winning anthologies. She’s been nominated for the Locus Awards, the British Science Fiction Awards, the Nommo Awards for African Speculative Fiction, and the Short Story Day Africa Award.
Ex Marginalia, her collection of essays by authors of colour, is available now.
Set in a future West Africa, my novel is a reimagining of the first contact between Europe and the Americas. The story centres on Nya, a fiery young woman who suffers from selective mutism. Her life in the utopian community of the Onitsha Homestead may not be perfect, but it is peaceful and safe. One night, a storm-ravaged ship washes ashore, bringing a crew of strangers from the northern islands once known as Europe. Among them is the handsome Behn, a brilliant but awkward young man who prefers plants to people. As Behn and Nya navigate their growing attraction to each other, Nya begins to fear that Behn’s people – and their dangerous ideas about gender and governance – may bring about the collapse of her society. Now, to save her people, Nya must push past her fears to access a power that she buried deep within herself long ago. But doing so may cost her the desires of her heart.