Esi Edugyan was born and raised in
Calgary,
Alberta, to parents from
Ghana. Her
debut novel,
The Second Life of Samuel Tyne, written at the age of 24, was published in 2004 and was shortlisted for the
Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in 2005. Despite favourable reviews for her first novel, Edugyan had difficulty securing a publisher for her second fiction manuscript.
Scotiabank Giller Prize,
Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and
Governor General's Award for English-language fiction. Edugyan was one of two Canadian writers, alongside
Patrick deWitt, to make all four award lists in 2011. On November 8, 2011, she won the Giller Prize for
Half-Blood Blues. Again alongside deWitt's work,
Half-Blood Blues was shortlisted for the 2012
Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction. In September 2012, in a ceremony in
Cleveland, Ohio, Edugyan received the
Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in fiction for
Half-Blood Blues, chosen by a jury composed of
Rita Dove,
Henry Louis Gates Jr.,
Joyce Carol Oates,
Steven Pinker, and
Simon Schama. In March 2014, Edugyan's first work of non-fiction,
Dreaming of Elsewhere: Observations on Home, was published by the
University of Alberta Press in the
Henry Kreisel Memorial Lecture Series. In 2016, she was writer-in-residence at
Athabasca University in
Edmonton, Alberta. Her third novel,
Washington Black, was published in September 2018. It won the
Giller Prize in November 2018, making Edugyan only the third writer, after
M. G. Vassanji and
Alice Munro, ever to win the award twice.
Washington Black was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the
2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and the 2020
International Dublin Literary Award. The novel was selected for the 2022 edition of
Canada Reads, where it was defended by
Mark Tewksbury. She features in
Margaret Busby's 2019 anthology
New Daughters of Africa with the contribution "The Wrong Door: Some Meditations on Solitude and Writing". In 2021, Edugyan presented six lectures as part of
CBC Radio's
Massey Lectures series. The lectures were published in a book,
Out of the Sun: On Race and Storytelling. Edugyan was selected as chair for the 2023
Booker Prize jury, alongside fellow judges
Robert Webb,
Mary Jean Chan,
Adjoa Andoh and
James Shapiro. ==Personal life==