Nnedi Okorafor’s (2025) and Harmonia Rosales’ Chronicles of Ori: An African Epic (2025) both appear on the list, marking a significant moment for African literature in American awards recognition.
By Abioye Damilare Samson
African authors: Nnedi Okorafor and Harmonia Rosales have been nominated in the Outstanding Literary Work – Fiction category at the 2026 NAACP Image Awards. Okorafor’s Death of the Author (2025) and Rosales’s Chronicles of Ori: An African Epic (2025) both appear on the list, marking a significant moment for African literature in American awards recognition.
Death of the Author, published by William Morrow, continues the Nigerian-American author’s exploration of African-centred speculative fiction. The book joins a body of work that includes the World Fantasy Award-winning Who Fears Death (2010) and the Nebula and Hugo Award-winning Binti trilogy. Rosales’s Chronicles of Ori: An African Epic, published by W. W. Norton & Company, represents the visual artist and author’s work in reimagining African narratives through both art and text. Both titles were featured on Brittle Paper’s 100 Notable African Books of 2025.
The Outstanding Literary Work – Fiction category also includes Kennedy Ryan’s Can’t Get Enough, Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s Happy Land, and Victoria Christopher Murray’s Harlem Rhapsody. The nominations reflect the awards’ continued commitment to recognising diverse voices in American literature while highlighting works that centre Black experiences and storytelling traditions.
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 with the goal of creating better images for people of colour working in the entertainment industry.
The 2026 Image Awards ceremony will take place in February and early March. The over 40 categories are voted on by NAACP members, with the literary categories representing nine distinct areas, including Biography/Autobiography, Children, Debut Author, Fiction, Graphic Novel, Instructional, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Youth/Teens.