Author name: Tochukwu Okafor

Essays editor Tochukwu Okafor is a Nigerian writer whose work has appeared in the 2018 Best of the Net, the 2019 Best Small Fictions, The Guardian, Harvard’s Transition Magazine, Columbia Journal, and elsewhere. A 2018 Rhodes Scholar finalist and a 2018 Kathy Fish Fellow, he has won the 2017 Short Story Day Africa Prize for Short Fiction, for which he was longlisted in 2016. He is a 2021 Jack Straw Writing Fellow and an alumnus of the 2021 Tin House Winter Workshop. He holds a master’s degree from Carnegie Mellon University and has received scholarships from Etisalat (now 9mobile), the MTN Foundation, Grub Street, and Exxon Mobil. He has been shortlisted for the 2017 Awele Creative Trust Award, the 2016 Problem House Press Short Story Prize, the 2016 Southern Pacific Review Short Story Prize, and has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He was a member of the 2015 Association of Nigerian Authors Creative Writing Workshop and the 2016 Short Story Day Africa Writing Workshop, a recipient of the 2021 Frank Conley Memorial Scholarship, and a two-time recipient of the Festus Iyayi Award for Excellence for Prose and Playwriting. He lives in Worcester, USA, and is at work on a novel and a short story collection. Follow him on Twitter @toch_okafor and on Instagram @tochukwu_okafor.