Otosirieze, a writer, culture journalist, curator, and media consultant, is the founder and editor of
Open Country Mag. For the magazine, he has written longform features and Profiles of
Wole Soyinka,
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,
Rita Dominic, and
Cardinal Arinze; curates
The Next Generation, a series of special issues highlighting rising literary voices; co-conceptualized Nigeria’s first formal bestseller list, with bookstore Rovingheights; and runs a Curatorial Fellowship, funded by Africa No Filter, mentoring creatives in art, fashion, music, and media.
He was editor of
Folio Nigeria, then CNN’s exclusive media affiliate in Africa, before its relaunch on
Open Country Mag, and was briefly Business/Creative Head of its planned portfolio company Folio Digital Media. There, he wrote over a hundred pieces on the Nigerian culture scene, covering innovation in over 20 fields, including film, art, music, tech, sports, cuisine, fashion, journalism, sculpture, beauty, health, and activism.
He was chair of The Gerald Kraak Prize, a South African initiative for storytelling about gender, sexuality, and social justice, and edited its fourth anthology
The Beautyful Ones Have Just Been Born. He was a judge for The Morland Scholarship, a British grant for African writers. He has led or joined editorial teams at a host of platforms and projects in African literature, including at 14, the pioneering LGBTQ collective.
His fiction has appeared in
The Threepenny Review and
Transition. He has given guest lectures at Dartmouth College and at Grinnell College. He has an MA in African Studies and a BA in English/History from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was Adjunct Assistant Professor of Creative Writing. He taught English at Godfrey Okoye University, Enugu.
In 2019, he received the inaugural The Future Awards Africa Prize for Literature. In 2020, he was named among “The 100 Most Influential Young Nigerians” by Avance Media. He has appeared on
With Chude‘s list of “The 150 Most Interesting Nigerians in Culture.” He is a member of PEN America and of the National Book Critics Circle. Twitter & Instagram: @otosirieze. Website:
otosirieze.com.
