francesca ekwuyasi is a learner, artist, and storyteller born in Lagos, Nigeria. She was awarded the Writers Trust Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers in 2022 for her debut novel Butter Honey Pig Bread (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020). Butter Honey Pig Bread was also shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award, the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Amazon Canada First Novel Award, and longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Dublin Literary Award. Butter Honey Pig Bread was placed second on CBC’s Canada Reads, where it was selected as one of five contenders in 2021 for “the one book that all of Canada should read.”
francesca’s writing has appeared in The Malahat Review, Transition Magazine, Room Magazine, Brittle Paper, The Ex-Puritan, C Magazine, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Canadian Art, Chatelaine, and elsewhere. Her short story “Ọrun is Heaven” was longlisted for the 2019 Journey Prize. She co-authored Curious Sounds: A Dialogue in Three Movements (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2023), a multi-genre collaborative book with Roger Mooking.