For roughly two weeks in late October and November 2024, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, the Nigerian speculative-fiction writer and the first African-born Black author to win a Nebula Award, went from one of the genre's most celebrated figures to a name attached to the word "unethical" in headline after headline. Within seven weeks, the body that had accepted the original allegations on his behalf had investigated them through a third party and formally retracted the two most serious ones. That retraction never got the same headline treatment the accusation did, and outside the specialist press, it barely travelled at all.
On 25 October 2024, the author and editor Erin Cairns published a lengthy account, running to dozens of pages with attached screenshots, accusing Ekpeki of unethical and unprofessional conduct spanning several years of their working relationship. The opening line of her report alleged that Ekpeki had submitted a story she had written entirely by herself to a magazine publishing Black writers' work, without crediting her on the byline. The report went further, alleging that Ekpeki had misrepresented his professional contacts, obscured details about publications and editors, and manipulated her over the course of their collaboration.
File 770 carried the allegations the same week. So did the trade magazine Locus, which opened a running post titled "Ekpeki Allegations" reporting that other industry professionals had also come forward with concerns on social media. Jason Sanford's newsletter, Genre Grapevine, ran its own account the same weekend, built substantially around a statement from Chris Barkley, who had helped fundraise to bring Ekpeki to Glasgow's 2024 Worldcon. Barkley, quoted in that account, said the news that friends had independently confirmed misconduct left him and his partner "shocked, angered and most of all disappointed." He also cautioned, notably, that accusations like these risk feeding people hostile to Ekpeki on racial grounds, and could cast suspicion on other African writers by association, a caveat worth remembering given what came later.
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) moved fast. Ekpeki had been elected a Director-at-Large on the SFWA Board that summer, taking up the position on 1 July 2024. On 27 October 2024, two days after Cairns' report went public, the SFWA Board met to hear from the parties involved, including Ekpeki himself, then voted unanimously to remove him from the Board, citing Article V(5)(iii) of its bylaws, effective immediately. SFWA said it would not answer further questions, citing the privacy of those involved. Two days after that, on 29 October 2024, the African Speculative Fiction Society (ASFS) issued its own statement acknowledging the allegations and inviting further concerns from its membership.
Ekpeki answered publicly on 31 October 2024, addressing the claims point by point. He described the situation as the product of miscommunication and assumption on both sides, said he was managing chronic illness and difficult conditions while working in Nigeria, and apologised for causing pain, while stating plainly that he had not tried to steal from Cairns.
On 8 November 2024, File 770 published a follow-up under the headline “Two Accusations Against Ekpeki Disproved.” Citing an anonymous source with direct knowledge of the matter and archived documents, it reported two specific findings that contradicted the opening line of Cairns' report. Cairns' name had, in fact, appeared on the byline: Ekpeki's cover letter to the publication identified her as co-author, and both authors' names appeared on the manuscript's title page. The framing of the outlet as one that would not have accepted a white co-author did not hold up either; File 770's source said the publication had carried work by a white author before and would not have barred Cairns' involvement on that basis.
On 11 November 2024, Ekpeki contacted Locus directly, pointing to the File 770 piece and stating that the two central claims against him had been disproved. He separately disputed a claim about editing credit on the anthology Dominion, saying Cairns had privately acknowledged that specific point was mistaken. That detail rests on Ekpeki's own account of a private exchange and has not been independently corroborated by File 770 or Locus.
On 10 December 2024, ASFS released a formal statement that went further than a mere update. It stated plainly that the specific allegations of appropriation and non-disclosure had been investigated by an independent third party and did not hold up, and that it had issued a public retraction. The statement confirmed Ekpeki remained a member of the organisation, and announced a new Code of Conduct for handling future complaints.
Yet none of the outlets that broke the original story corrected it with the same weight they gave the accusation. Locus never ran a standalone article walking back its own initial framing. Its original post, "Ekpeki Allegations," was instead edited in place, with dated notes stacked at the top: updated 29 October to add the ASFS statement, 31 October to add Ekpeki's statement, 11 and 12 November with his further comments, and 10 December with ASFS's retraction. A reader who saw the original headline and never revisited the page would have no way of knowing the story had moved, let alone that the central claim in it had been retracted. File 770 handled it more directly: "Two Accusations Against Ekpeki Disproved" was its own standalone post with its own headline, dated and independently findable. Genre Grapevine followed the Locus pattern rather than File 770's: its own correction; a note stating that "the byline allegation against Ekpeki shared in the report by Erin Cairns has been proven incorrect," while adding that Cairns "still stands behind the rest of her report", did not run as its own post. It was folded into a routine monthly roundup covering unrelated genre news, with no separate headline of its own.
Cairns' own correction met the same fate. On 11 November 2024, she posted on Bluesky that she had not been part of the editorial team on "Anthology D" and had not edited it, adding that Ekpeki had told her she would receive a thank-you in the acknowledgements that never appeared. She apologised to "Editor Z" and to the anthology itself. File 770 folded this into its existing disproof coverage. Locus, Genre Grapevine, and Electric Literature did not report it at all. Cairns' post had drawn 12 likes.
The pattern shows up again in an unexpected place. On 6 January 2025, Electric Literature, a nonprofit literary magazine with a reported readership in the millions, published a roundup recommending newsletters worth subscribing to. One entry recommended Genre Grapevine and cited, as an example of Sanford's work, his coverage of the allegations that a Nebula-winning author had improperly submitted a story written by a white writer under his own byline. That description stated the specific, byline-related claim as fact, with no qualifier, more than a month after File 770 had reported that claim did not hold up. The piece carries a modification date of 27 January 2025, after ASFS's retraction. The only change made was a bracketed editor's note stating that Sanford "has since provided an update on the situation," linking to a further Sanford post. The note does not link to File 770's disproof, does not mention ASFS's retraction, and does not revise the sentence describing the original claim as fact.
SFWA has not said, in anything available publicly, whether the Board revisited its removal decision in light of ASFS's December retraction. The Board's original statement gave no detail of the evidence it weighed, citing privacy. Outside observers cannot independently confirm what the Board knew that has since been confirmed, disproved, or left untested.
ASFS reaffirmed his membership alongside its retraction. File 770 continued reporting on Ekpeki through 2025 and 2026 as part of its ordinary genre-news coverage: the 2027 open call for Dominion II, the anthology he co-edits; the acquisition of his debut novel, Birth of Orisha, by Caezik SF & Fantasy; and that novel's shortlisting for a Santa Fe Writers Project award. In February 2026, Ekpeki was struck by a ChowDeck delivery rider in Lagos and sustained a spinal fracture. His publisher, Shahid Mahmud of Arc Manor, organised a public fundraiser on his behalf and described him as one of the field's most important working writers.
Editor's Note: Google's Gemini was used to make the illustration of Ekpeki above.
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