A. Igoni Barrett

A. Igoni Barrett was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria and lives in Lagos. His short story collection, Love Is Power, or Something Like That, was selected by NPR as a best book of 2013. In 2014 he was named on the Africa39 list of writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define future trends in African literature.

His first novel, Blackass, published in 2015, has been translated into Chinese, among other languages, and was nominated for the PEN Open Book Award, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, the FT/OppenheimerFunds Emerging Voices Awards, the Kitschies Golden Tentacle Award, and the Nommo Award for Best Novel. In 2016, Blackass was chosen by the Chinese Foreign Literature Society as a winner of its 21st Century Best Foreign Novel Award.

His second novel, Whyteface, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press (North America) and Narrative Landscape Press (Nigeria) in the fall of 2026.