Esi Edugyan

Edugyan was born to two Ghanaian immigrants and raised in Calgary, Alberta. She studied creative writing at the University of Victory and published her debut novel, The Second Life of Samuel Tyne, at age 26; it was short-listed for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award in 2005. She also earned a master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. Despite favorable reviews for her first novel, Edugyan had difficulty finding a publisher for her second manuscript. She spent time as a writer-in-residence in Germany and wrote another novel, Half-Blood Blues, about a jazz musician in Berlin between the World Wars. Published in 2011, the book was short-listed for several major literary prizes, including the Man Booker Prize, and it won the Giller Prize. Edugyan then published her first nonfiction book, Dreaming of Elsewhere, in March 2014. Her third novel, Washington Black, was published in 2018 and won the Giller Prize, making Edugyan only the third novelist to win the award twice. Edugyan currently lives in Victoria, British Columbia, and is married to novelist Steven Price, whom she met at the University of Victoria.