Koye Oyedeji is a fiction and non-fiction creative based in Washington D.C. His work is often centered around the black diaspora. His writings have appeared in a number of publications including Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, AGNI, Wasafiri Magazine, The Believer and elsewhere. His past fiction fellowships include the Callaloo Writer’s Workshop and VONA writing workshop, a Tennessee Williams Scholarship at the Sewanee Writers Conference and a Work Study Scholarship at the 2016 Bread Loaf Writers Conference. He has taught at American University and the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, where he helped revamp the creative writing program. He is currently working on a composite novel and a novel. Project Description: Koye will be working on a composite novel, which features a transatlantic kaleidoscope of characters from Lagos, London and Washington DC. Their worlds collide when Emmanuel, a young Nigerian-American boy, encounters an older African-American Ifa practitioner. The encounter marks the beginning of a voyage of creative discovery which, in the years to come, places the Alukos — a UK family of four who all these years later are still coming to terms with the death of their youngest member — squarely in Emmanuel’s sight. It’s a death which he believes has power, history, magic and collective memory.
