Tune in to hear Eloghosa Osunde discuss her book Vagabonds! in conversation with Marlon James! This is a VIRTUAL EVENT please register here
In Nigeria, vagabonds are those whose existence is literally outlawed: the poor, the queer, the drivers and dancers, the abused and displaced and vulnerable. Eloghosa Osunde’s brave, fiercely inventive novel traces a wild array of characters for whom life itself is a form of resistance: a driver for a debauched politician with the power to command life and death; a legendary fashion designer who gives birth to a grown daughter; a lesbian couple whose tender relationship sheds unexpected light on their BDSM work; a wife and mother who attends a secret spiritual gathering that promises to afford her escape from her violent husband. As their lives intertwine—in bustling markets and underground clubs, churches and hotel rooms—the vagabonds are seized and challenged by spirits who command the city’s dark energy. Whether running from danger, meeting with secret lovers, finding their identities, or vanquishing their demons, Osunde’s characters confront and support one another, before converging one night for the once-in-a-lifetime gathering that gives the book its unexpectedly joyous conclusion.
Blending unvarnished realism with myth and fantasy, Vagabonds! is a vital work of imagination that takes us deep inside the hearts, minds, and bodies of a people in duress—and in triumph.
About the Author:
Eloghosa Osunde is a Nigerian writer and multidisciplinary artist. 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), Gulf Coast, Georgia Review, Guernica, 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. She was recently profiled by Ama Kwarteng for Coveteur's Class of 2021 issue, covered by Issa Rae.
About the Moderator:
Marlon James was born in Jamaica in 1970. He is the author of the New York Times-bestseller Black Leopard, Red Wolf, which was a finalist for the National Book Award for fiction in 2019. His novel A Brief History of Seven Killings won the 2015 Man Booker Prize. It was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature for fiction, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for fiction, and the Minnesota Book Award. It was also a New York Times Notable Book. James is also the author of The Book of Night Women, which won the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Minnesota Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction and an NAACP Image Award. His first novel, John Crow’s Devil, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for first fiction and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and was a New York Times Editors’ Choice. James divides his time between Minnesota and New York.