Eloghosa Osunde is a Nigerian writer, multidisciplinary maker and worldbender.
Winner of MoAD's African Literary Award (2023), the Plimpton Prize for Fiction (2021), an ASME Award for Fiction (2022), they are the author of NECESSARY FICTION (July 2025) and the critically acclaimed VAGABONDS! published in 2022 by Riverhead Books (US), Fourth Estate (UK), Dioptra (GR) and Farafina Books (NG). VAGABONDS! — a New York Times' Editors Choice and New Yorker Best Book of The Year — was a finalist for the Edmund White Prize For Fiction, the Nnomo Awards for Best Novel, the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, a top three finalist for the VCU Capbell Prize; longlisted for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize and the Nota Bene Prize; was a NoName Book Club Pick, a Barnes and Noble Discover Pick and a Foyles Book Of The Month. Eloghosa was casting director and creative overseer of the audiobook, which was a six person production directed by Frances Loy and Grammy nominee Ali Muirden.
Photographed by Carlijn Jacobs, styled by Camilla Nickerson and announced a VS20 artist in Victoria's Secret World Tour '23 film, Eloghosa's work on the project included a custom monologue crafted for and voiced by Naomi Campbell, introduced by Gigi Hadid; and employed a combination of media to highlight their work as a text, sound and movement artist channeling morphing forms. Profiled by Dazed for their Autumn 2024 The Impossible Issue, and then asked to write their Spring 2025 cover story on Rema, Eloghosa has also been profiled by Open Country Magazine for their 2023 Next Generation Issue, by Coveteur for their Class of 2021 issue, and featured in Elle, Glamour South Africa, Sunday Times, Them, Creative Review and Shondaland to name a few. An alumna of the Lambda Literary Workshop (2019), New York Film Academy (2017), the Caine Prize Workshop (2018) and the Purple Hibiscus Trust Workshop (2015), Eloghosa's writing has appeared in multiple publications including Paris Review, Granta, Gulf Coast, Georgia Review, Guernica, Lithub, Catapult, Berlin Quarterly and their visual art in Vogue, The New York Times and Paper Magazine. They were the head judge of Native Magazine's Native Horror Stories (2024) competition and held [Writing In The Language Of Your Mind] a 2023 sold out masterclass at Lolwe.
In creating art prints for fashion collections or writing songs for music artists, building performance art or immersive mixed-media exhibitions, Eloghosa's work honors medium as an integral part of artmaking. They situate their visual art in the overlap between fiction, photography and painting. Their work tests the limits of reality (who defines it? is it singular? does it matter?) by locating protagonists in intangible, alternate realms where the granular details of time and setting melt to a blur. Eloghosa worked on Orange Culture's SS20 collection, creating art prints for the label which showed at Lagos and New York Fashion Weeks. Their visual art has been exhibited across four continents so far —twice solo; selected for the New York Times Portfolio Review; for Photoville's EmergiCubes (2017) and showed at the National Museum in Lagos, Nigeria in 2020. Eloghosa's work was most recently hosted at Manifold Lagos (2024) via an interactive audio and text activation of their metafictional piece: 'Please Leave A Message After The Tone.'
Represented by the Wylie Agency for books, Eloghosa was previously with Anonymous Content, and is now represented by United Talent Agency for Film/TV. They are the maker and sound curator of TATAFO — a music, fashion and art film loosely based on their debut novel. Awarded a 2017 Miles Morland Scholarship to write their debut work of fiction, their Plimpton-winning short story 'Good Boy,' was selected by Jesmyn Ward for Best American Short Stories 2021. Named as one of the 100 most influential Africans (2022), they are a 2023 Johnnie Walker x Trace Africa Top Thirty artist and a 2021 Future Awards nominee for Art and Literature. Eloghosa is a world traveler with shifting bases, and is open to international opportunities on any continent.