The 2020 Freedom Awards Honour LGBTQ & Feminist Advocates

Otosirieze, a writer, culture journalist, curator, and media consultant, is the founder and editor of Open Country Mag. He was editor of Folio Nigeria, CNN’s exclusive media affiliate in Africa, and has led or joined editorial teams at a host of platforms and projects in African literature. He has written about the Nigerian culture scene, covering innovation in over 20 fields, including film, art, music, tech, sports, cuisine, fashion, journalism, sculpture, beauty, health, and activism. His Profile subjects have included Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Rita Dominic, Teju Cole, Damon Galgut, and Tsitsi Dangarembga. His fiction has appeared in The Threepenny Review and Transition. He sat on the judging panel of The Morland Scholarship, a British grant for African writers, and currently chairs the panel of The Gerald Kraak Prize, a South African initiative for storytelling about gender, sexuality, and social justice. He has an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and an MA in African Studies and BA in English/History from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. 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 twice appeared on #WithChude's list of "The 150 Most Interesting Nigerians in Culture." Twitter & Instagram: @otosirieze. Website: otosirieze.com.