Send Oghenechovwe Ekpeki to World Fantasy Con
Donation protected
Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki is the first African editor to be a finalist for the World Fantasy Award, with the awards to be presented at the 2022 World Fantasy Convention in New Orleans. He's nominated in the best anthology category for the first ever Year's Best African Speculative Fiction anthology, which he edited and published. Ekpeki would like to maximize the opportunity of being in the States and attend the World convention. It's an opportunity that would normally cost infinitely more without a visa and were he out of the country.
A successful previous fundraiser brought Ekpeki to this year's Worldcon, where he was a finalist for two Hugo Awards. However, his gruesome battle with the US embassy in Nigeria for a visa and exorbitant fees and repeated payments resulting from that (including last-minute changes to his international flights) resulted in costs far exceeding what that fundraiser brought in. So this new fundraiser would also mop up those expenses as well.
The costs to be covered by this fundraiser are:
- WFC Registration: $250
- Flight to and from convention plus expenses: $1000
- Hotel (5 nights): $1250
- Resolving fees and payments from WorldCon 2nd visa hassle and resulting last-minute flight changes: $1500
- Total: $4000
About Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki
Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki is the first African born, Black writer to win the Nebula Award and be a Hugo Award finalist. He's the first Black person alongside Sheree Renee Thomas to be a Hugo Award Best Editor Short Form finalist, and the first BIPOC to be a finalist in the Hugo Award editing and fiction categories in the same year. In addition to the Nebula Award, he's won the Otherwise, Nommo and British Fantasy Awards and been a finalist for the Locus, Sturgeon, World Fantasy Award, BSFA Award and others. His works have appeared in Apex Magazine, Strange Horizons, Galaxy's Edge, Asimov's, Uncanny Magazine, Tordotcom and other venues. He edited the Bridging Worlds and Year's Best African Speculative Fiction anthologies, guest edited the Interstellar Flight Press Collections window and co-edited the Dominion and Africa Risen anthology due on Tordotcom. He founded Jembefola Press and the Emeka Walter Dinjos Memorial Award For Disability In Speculative Fiction and is a guest of honour in CanCon 2022 and ICFA 44 in 2023.
Samples of Ekpeki's Work
- Download copy of the short story "Destiny Delayed," originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction (May/June 2022) and reprinted in Galaxy's Edge.
- Essay "Too Dystopian for Whom? A Continental Nigerian Writer's Perspective" in the current issue of Uncanny Magazine.
- Download free copy of Bridging Worlds: Global Conversations On Creating Pan-African Speculative Literature In a Pandemic.
- Information about Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction edited by Sheree Renée Thomas, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, and Zelda Knight, to be released November 15, 2022.
Organiser
Jason Sanford
Organiser
Columbus, OH
