Novelist
Nii Ayikwei Parkes is a Ghanaian-British producer, editor and writer who has won acclaim as a children’s author, poet, broadcaster and novelist. Winner of multiple international awards including Ghana’s ACRAG award, his novel Tail of the Blue Bird was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize, going on to win France’s Prix Baudelaire and Prix Laure Bataillon in 2014; and his latest book of poems, The Geez (2020), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, was longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, and shortlisted for the Walcott Prize. He was the founding director of the Aidoo Centre for Creative Writing in Accra and is the founder of flipped eye publishing, a leading small press. Nii Ayikwei serves on the boards of World Literature Today and the Caine Prize, and has served as a judge for several literature prizes including the Commonwealth Prize, the NSK Neustadt Prize and the Harvill Secker Young Translators’ Prize. As a producer, he is the founder of the African Writers’ Evening series of talks. He is currently a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of West London.