Eloghosa Osunde is a Nigerian writer and multidisciplinary maker.
An alumna of the Lambda Literary Workshop (2019), New York Film Academy (2017) and the Caine Prize Workshop (2018), Eloghosa's writing has appeared in multiple publications including Paris Review (where she writes a column), Granta, Gulf Coast, Georgia Review, Guernica, Lithub, Catapult, Berlin Quarterly and her visual art in Vogue, The New York Times and Paper Magazine. She is a 2020 MacDowell Colony Fellow and the 2021 prose judge of Fugue Journal's annual writing contest. Recently profiled by Coveteur for their Class of 2021 issue, Eloghosa has also been featured by Elle, Them, Creative Review and Shondaland, to name a few.
In creating book covers for authors and art prints for fashion collections or writing monologues for theatre festivals and building immersive mixed-media exhibitions, Eloghosa's work honors medium as an integral part of artmaking. She situates her visual art in the overlap between fiction, photography and painting. Her 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. Her visual art has been exhibited across four continents so far —twice solo; selected for the New York Portfolio Review; for Photoville's EmergiCubes (2017) and was most recently at the National Museum in Lagos, Nigeria.
Previously with Anonymous Content, and now represented by United Talent Agency for Film/TV, Eloghosa is the writer, director, producer 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, they are the winner of the 2021 Plimpton Prize for Fiction for their short story 'Good Boy,' which was also recently selected by Jesmyn Ward for Best American Short Stories 2021. They are represented by the Wylie Agency and the author of VAGABONDS!, published in 2022 by Riverhead Books (US), Fourth Estate (UK) and Farafina Books (NG). So far, VAGABONDS! — a New York Times' Critics Choice — is a Barnes and Noble Discover Pick, a finalist for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, has been longlisted for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize, received three starred trade reviews from Kirkus, Booklist and Publisher's Weekly, other glowing reviews from publications including Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, TLS, Guardian, Star Tribune, Autostraddle; was named a Most Anticipated Book of The Year by Entertainment Weekly, Teen Vogue, NYT, NY Mag, i-D/Vice, Harpers Bazaar, British Vogue, Vulture, Pop Sugar, An Other Magazine, Lithub, The Millions, Ms Magazine, Brittle Paper, Open Country amongst others, and repeatedly hailed as a Best Book Of The Year by publications including the New Yorker, Goodreads, Barnes and Noble, Chicago Review of Books and American Library Association. VAGABONDS! has now been translated to Greek by Icaros Babassakis, and will be published in paperback in two territories by March this year. Eloghosa was casting director and creative overseer of the audiobook, directed by Frances Loy and Grammy nominee Ali Muirden. A 2022 ASME awardwinner for fiction, they are currently writing Book Two.
When not in their work, Eloghosa can be found on a dancefloor somewhere, moving deliberately into morning.