Ijeoma Umebinyuo is a multidisciplinary Igbo-American writer and the founder of Aguwazi Creatives. Born in Lagos, she spent her childhood between the city and her ancestral hometown in Eastern Nigeria, where her grandfather introduced her to oral storytelling through Igbo folklore. Educated in both Nigeria and the United States, Umebinyuo attended undergraduate and graduate school in the United States.

Umebinyuo published her first poetry collection, Questions for Ada, in 2015. The collection was named one of the best-selling poetry books of all time by Shortform and recognized by African Arguments as one of Africa’s Must-Read Books of 2018. In 2016, she was named one of the top ten contemporary writers from Sub-Saharan Africa by Writivism.

In 2017, she presented a talk, Dismantling the Culture of Silence, at TEDx CooperUnion. Umebinyuo has given readings at Columbia University and Colgate University. She gave her first keynote speech at the inaugural Afrocentrism Conference organized by the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University. She was part of a panel discussion organized by the BBC focused on Nigerian women at the University of Lagos. She also participated in a panel on Gender, Silence, and the Politics of Writing at the Hong Kong International Poetry Festival.

Her work has been translated, published, and cited in multiple languages and literary publications. It has appeared in Speech and Silence Anthology published by Columbia University Press, Literarische Diverse, The NYU Black Renaissance Noire, Neue Rundschau, The MacGuffin, The Stockholm Review of Literature, Antología Internacional de Poesía Feminista, Oireserío: A Poetic Anthology for the Rivers of the Five Continents, and An Anthology of Womanist Poems, among others.

She has also published essays, including The Privilege of Geography in Missy Magazine (translated into German by Charlotte Milsch) and The Power of Owning and Centring Our Stories in Agenda, an African feminist journal.

In the summer of 2020, her Poem No. 4 was named by Vogue as one of the seven most important poems depicting the Black experience. Her poetry was also featured in Silence—Falling Silent Loudly, an exhibition at the Japanisches Palais in Dresden, Germany.

Umebinyuo’s work has also inspired other artists as well, in 2022, Variety wrote an article on the inspiration behind Abigail Spencer’s music video, “Spencer sings “Flowers In My Teeth” — a song with a title inspired by a line in one of Ijeoma Umebinyuo’s poems: “I am whole; woman who grows flowers between her teeth.” Her work has also been cited in various academic work, some centering on ecofeminism as well as academic intersectional work that seeks to bridge the divide between the Americas and Africa through decolonization.

Beyond literature, Umebinyuo is deeply engaged in the art and creative industries. In the Summer of 2022, she worked as a consultant in the early stages of Artsplit and led an art acquisition through Aguwazi Creatives, securing the works of Ozioma Onwuzulike for Artsplit.

Umebinyuo continues to write, create, and engage in literary and cultural discourse on the global stage. She is writing and finding her joy.