The win was announced during the first night of the 57th NAACP Image Awards virtual pre-show, which focused on literary, short-form, and creator categories.
By Abioye Damilare Samson
Nigerian-American author Nnedi Okorafor has received her first-ever NAACP Image Award in the Outstanding Literary Work – Fiction category for her novel Death of the Author, published by William Morrow.
The win was announced during the first night of the 57th NAACP Image Awards virtual pre-show, which focused on literary, short-form, and creator categories. For a writer who has spent decades centring Nigerian culture and Black identity in speculative fiction and has collected Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards along the way, having that work recognised by the NAACP membership specifically carries weight.
The novel follows Zelu, a disabled Nigerian-American author who has always been the odd one out in her large, traditional Nigerian family, uninterested in medicine or law, unmarried by choice, and far more devoted to writing than any of it.
The NAACP Image Awards is an annual ceremony presented by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to honour outstanding achievements in film, television, theatre, music, and literature. First held in 1967, the awards were conceived by Toni Vaz during a Beverly Hills NAACP branch meeting to create better images for people of colour working in the entertainment industry.
Over 40 categories are voted on by NAACP members, which means a win here reflects genuine resonance within the Black community, not just critical consensus or industry insiders. For Okorafor, winning in the fiction category means her work, rooted in Nigerian mythology, Africanfuturism, and the specific textures of the Black diaspora experience, landed with the very community it speaks to most directly.