Esi Edugyan

Esi Edugyan is the author of two Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning books, Washington Black (2018) and Half-Blood Blues (2011). She is the third writer, after M.G. Vassanji and Alice Munro, ever to win this award twice. Her debut novel, The Second Life of Samuel Tyne (2005), was published internationally, nominated for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, picked as a More Book Lust selection, and chosen by the New York Public Library as one of 2004’s Books to Remember.

Edugyan taught creative writing at both Johns Hopkins University and the University of Victoria, and has sat on many international panels, including the LesART Literary Festival in Esslingen, Germany, the Budapest Book Fair in Hungary, and Barnard College in New York City. Washington Black, her third novel, was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Reviewed as “enthralling” by the Boston Globe, “a rip-roaring tale,” by the Washington Post and “extraordinary” by the Seattle Times, Washington Black is a dazzling adventure story about a boy who rises from the ashes of slavery to become a free man of the world.