Akwaeke Emezi is an Igbo and Tamil writer and artist based in liminal spaces. Born and raised in Nigeria, she received her MPA from New York University. She was awarded a 2015 Miles Morland Writing Scholarship and won the 2017 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for ‘Africa’. Her work has been selected and edited by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and published in various literary magazines, including Granta. Freshwater is her debut novel.