Book Talk: One Leg on Earth with 'Pemi Aguda

Join us as we welcome National Book Award finalist 'Pemi Aguda for a discussion of her new novel, One Leg on Earth!

Q&A and book signing to follow discussion!

About the Book

Something is haunting the pregnant women of Lagos. Across the city, they are walking into water . . . and drowning.

Twenty-three-year-old Yosoye arrives in Lagos ready to start her life. Working for a slick architectural firm, she finds a city of adventure and opportunity. Her new world is one of fancy gallery openings, glamorous friends, and all the shiny potential of the future, encapsulated in projects like Omi City, the ultra-luxury development her company is building, a symbol of the dawn of a brighter Lagos.

But Yosoye's idyllic vision of Lagos soon begins to seem naive, and its darker, stranger layers trouble her. Something is not right about Omi City, and as construction speeds ahead, stories of strange deaths in the city's open waters reach a fever pitch. And then, after a chance encounter, Yosoye discovers she is pregnant . . . a revelation which puts her on a collision course with an inexplicable force that is as seductive as it is deadly. A masterwork by a writer hailed as "an astonishing talent" (Lauren Groff), One Leg on Earthis an ambitious novel like no other: a coming-of-age story, an uncanny exploration of motherhood, and a chilling vision of the dark side of progress.

About the Author

‘Pemi Aguda is from Lagos, Nigeria. She has an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan.

Her short stories have won O. Henry Prizes, a Nommo Award for Short Story, a Henfield Prize, and the Writivism Prize. Her work has been supported by an Octavia Butler Memorial Scholarship, and her novel-in-progress won the 2020 Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award. She was a 2021 Fiction Fellow with the Miami Book Fair, a 2022 MacDowell fellow, and is the current Hortense Spillers Assistant Editor at Transition Magazine. Ghostroots, her debut story collection, was a finalist for the 2024 National Book Awards in Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award.