My thoughts on the current situation surrounding Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki

Caution: this post is about Ekpeki but Gaiman, Harlan Ellison and others are getting brought up as a comparative example.

It has been brought to my attention that there are issues surrounding Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and ethics. Actually, it was Ekpeki who brought it to my attention via FB messenger after I saw two editors leave the Caribbean anthology with the super cryptic message of “It is with a heavy heart that I, Fabrice Guerrier and E.G. Condé are informing you that we are collectively leaving Donald Ekpeki’s Caribbean Pantheology anthology project. The Pantheology concept is a powerful and compelling subject, and Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki will always get credit for popularizing it, but for confidential reasons we cannot continue our work on the project” and asked him what happened when I showed him the message.

Full disclosure, I know Ekpeki personally and also my work is slated to be in one of his anthologies, Yemoja Tears, after he personally requested a story from me for it. Another one of my stories is still in the submission process for the Caribbean anthology he is part of (and, to my current knowledge, the two editors left around the time these ethics issues came to light, Oct 25, 2024). He has zero idea I’m posting this and will see it when everyone else does.

As I previously stated above, Ekpeki showed me the posts that were about him after I asked what was going on and he’s shown me links afterwards without me prompting. I have access to the original 70+ page document, the File 770 articles and updates, all provided by Ekpeki and seems unaltered. I also am still working through the info and doing my own research to make sure things add up.

When I first let folks know that I was getting to know Ekpeki, one informed me that he liked to self promo and he threw his weight around a lot. That was it. And this is in the field of western, traditional, science-fiction and fantasy writing, where Harlan Ellison groped a woman on stage at the Nebulas and is known for berating people openly, Issac Asimov snapped bra straps, and Neil Gaiman raped – but that was all pretty okayed behavior in the community. File 770 dragged its feet about Gaiman and both Asimov and Ellison are beloved in the traditional SFF community. I operate under a belief of “what you will accept is what you will allow” and if a White person, especially a guy, in the community has done something worse but still has a career or a half-way decent reputation, it shows me anything lesser is not a genuine concern in that community. In other words, I grade a person of color with the exact same yardstick as the White person gets. And if groping, berating and rape are fine in that community (especially if you have to hit a particular number for anyone to actually care), that means if anything less than that is creating a fire, there is probably a coat rack argument afoot. Remember, I came from the music industry, I have met worse and seen that get lauded. (People were surprised Bad Boy Entertainment lived up to its name, da fuq? 🙃)

Plus this was the same person who told me how great a person Pablo Defendini of Fireside fiction was when he was dropping novella contracts by surprise left and right after being mum for about a year – and blocking anyone who had an issue with that. That one got covered by SFWA’s Writer’s Beware and got a special caution notice from SFWA. I could not care less if Defendini was the bestest friend in the whole wide world that made the most amazing cupcakes and gave the bestest hugs – still not ok. I certainly wasn’t a fan of hearing it, especially as one of the novellas in front of Defendini was my work The Glassman when it was just 18,000 words. My work was on the final round before Defendini turned it down and I was super blown about that – until I later learned about the novella problems and the audio blackface. Actually, that was one diamond experience of several that pushed me to go indie and put out my work myself. When there was the verbal blackface audio version done by a White narrator of the essay “Da’ Art of Speculatin'”, the best Defendini could say to all that was basically “I have zero idea how my own publishing house runs”.

Now, one thing I have noticed is that Ekpeki gets a lot of hate from the traditional Sci-fi/Fantasy (SFF) writing community, which is overwhelmingly White. Especially when he started sweeping awards and getting attention from lit publications, including ones that regularly ignore writers of color, such as Locus and Publisher Weekly. And it’s pretty vicious, from immense death threats to people saying he’s a rapper (?????????? Racism really can short-circuit a brain) that is a danger to everyone or whatever Jan 6 bs they tout. And remember, Gaiman literally raped people and fans are still hankering for the next display of Good Omens. A good chunk of the fans are also SFF writers. SFWA even made “Gaiman rules” instead of “Gaiman Get Out” for their workshops over a decade ago that lasted pretty much up to now. Sooooooooooooooooooooo, to me, that means some things are okay and some things aren’t. Why, I’ve seen J.K. Rowlings get more heat than Gaiman does and while she is deeply transphobic, among a litany of other problems (that were previously ignored because they targeted the marginalized, some are still ignored), there’s nothing so far, to date, of her engaging in actual physical harm towards transpeople or anyone else. Gaiman has a current body count of at least five in terms of non-consensual behavior. Both are messed up people but it doesn’t escape me that one is treated worse than the other and it isn’t the one who did physical harm.

Speaking of SFWA, I am aware Ekpeki was also a newly elected Director-at-Large, one of several. A director-at-large is someone or a group (in SFWA’s case, a group) who assists the actual executive Board. One Black person at the top, especially in a position no other Black person has been in before, is not going to change the entire organization, especially if that organization has a historical level adherence to Whiteness. Double so if they’re the only Black person in the group. For all I know, it’s just another “get you in the door just to shove you right back out of it and say ‘well, we tried ::shrug::'” or “If anything goes wrong, remember: blame the Black one” type position. Happens often. I do know this current skirmish shouldn’t get him booted out if they can literally develop a special rule for Neil Gaiman preying on younger women at SFWA events for well over a decade. And they let Gaiman do pretty much everything SFWA related (he hasn’t held office, however). And this excludes the behavior of Asimov, China Miéville and Harlan Ellison. Hey, SFWA is probably waiting for 2-3 years to pass so they can shove Gaiman into more SFWA stuff. Ekpeki, however, was booted out on Oct 28, 2024. And it looks like it was the only time SFWA had a shuffle-up mid year in it’s history. Harlan Ellison was able to be vice president for the entire term 1965 – 1967. Harlan wasn’t a sweetheart during those years and didn’t magically turn into an ungracious dick after those years. Same Ellison through all that time. But still kept the job. Still beloved. So, ah, I was right, it was a “fry the fly in milk” type position for Ekpeki.

Back to Ekpeki, pobody nerfect and everyone can do something evil so that’s why I still looked at the links Ekpeki provided and also looked about elsewhere so I could see things for myself. It’s similar to how I approached the accusations with Gaiman, I listened to every podcast and writing about his behavior, despite the fact he already was showing major signs on the walls in how he acted and treated others years prior. I do this because saints aren’t as common as others would like to think. While I already believed the women Gaiman raped when it was just one, it doesn’t mean I don’t want to learn the details so I can make a better decision or have a thorough thought about the situation. I rather make as informed a decision I can, not just vibe off of feelz and “well, I already like this person” or “well, I already dislike this person”. You learn that one kinda fast in the music industry, especially if you are in any circles with folks like R. Kelly and/or the Lost Prophets. Vibes are nice but sometimes vibes lie. Especially if they are meant to.

This means that if anyone has anything concerning about Ekpeki (that would also be devastating if it were a White guy doing it, not just “Hey, we finally got something to nail you to the wall! – unless you wrote Coraline, love that book and the movie was brilliant”), then send it. Big or small, I do want to see whatever you have. It might not move me, but then again it might, I genuinely can’t tell if I don’t see it. I thought Ce-Lo Green was a great person – up until his rape case, the details around it and his “who gives a sh#t” reaction to it. I didn’t need to see the case, his temper and words were enough to make me notify every woman I personally knew in the industry to watch themselves around him and anyone who seems to support him since he’s in the same circles I run in also. And some were notifying me of the same before I could get a word out. I hadn’t met him but I didn’t want to risk the safety of someone who did or would and they felt the same. If I see an issue and it looks thoroughly definitive, I change with it. Ditto with Buckcherry and Marylin Manson. I looked at as much as I could find when Meg Thee Stallion was shot, including footage and social media posts. Because I want to make an informed decision, not one based on feelings if I can help it. And when there was the audio of her shooter admitting he shot her, that pretty much sealed the deal. However, I already believed her because her side was the most cohesive and made the most sense out of everyone. And lined up with the police footage I eventually found.

All acid aside briefly and back to the world of writing, I do want to see proof of more misbehavior if it is there. I genuinely do. I have a Contact Me form and I religiously check my messages so know that if something is sent, I will see it. But understand that I’m going to weigh it by it’s own accord – and then I look at the community affected and see how they usually handle issues like that and worse ones. If it’s a community that can make special rules to accommodate messed up folks like rapists and gropers (especially if they are White because race matters and it’s amazing how fast people are sticklers for rules when someone darker is around), then it’s going to make me wonder why something that is comparatively smaller is getting such heat. Remember, if the community is already fairly ok with rape and other bigger problems, what makes this comparatively smaller instance so special?

I also saw that File 770 debunked the original complaint, and the woman who brought this all forth apologized but File 770 still recognizes that this doesn’t automatically heal everything to do with Ekpeki.

By the way, there’s concerns that Ekpeki “White guilts” White people into voting for him in awards and funding his “personal” trips to WorldCon and other writing conventions.

Let’s get some bits out of the way:

He’s a writer, WorldCon is a writing convention that houses the Hugos, that’s not a personal trip, that’s a business one. I went to Multiverse as an author – it’s a book convention. Learn the difference between business and personal, it will help a lot. I’m personally about to go to South Korea to work on a book series later in 2025. I’m working, not having Super Happy KPop Fun Time.

Moving on, I personally have never met or known a single person who has killed themselves due to White guilt. Regular, standard, garden-variety guilt? There are cemeteries filled with them and they crowd trauma disorder units like a party no one would ever want to be invited to. White guilt? No one. Even if White people were offing themselves from an attack of conscience (good riddance? If that’s the route someone takes as the alternative to literally unlearning harmful rhetoric and being a better person – which is tough but not impossible and not all bramble and turmoil, you do get to make new friends and have more vibrant life experiences – then please head for your nearest exit bag because hey, something-something Darwin-related), it’s not my personal problem. Or the problem of any person of color. Including Ekpeki. I’ve seen him post about his fundraisers on facebook, I don’t see any guilting. I have seen him post about his experiences, it’s not suffera literature. If anything, it comes off more as “White people are paying attention to me when they usually ignore Black people vivaciously (and still do), might as well talk about issues here that affect me and others like me.” Pretty standard of any Black person who has over-glaring attention from White people. Because you have zero idea when they’ll go from “this is my favorite Negro” to “there’s a fire burning in their eyes – and it’s in the shape of a cross”, and it’s super fast. Look no further than Will Smith & Kanye if you want a recent and visible rendition of how that all goes. Either shamed or go mental. Or any fairly visible Black kid in the D&D space. Because these are the same people who hop from Octavia Butler (after she hit her head on the pavement and croaked, they did not care much about her prior) to N.K. Jemison to Ekpeki now. They’re tokenized, in other words. None of these writers wanted to be used in this way, they just wanted to write, just like everyone else. But White folks in SFF seem to have an extremely hard time understanding that. Even I don’t want that kind of messed up attention, I’m not interested in becoming Alexander from Baltimore Sci-Fi Society, the Black kid who got this exact treatment (again, he didn’t ask for, because he was a teen surrounded by adults) and went batty as a result. Because that’s the end result: you either go nuts, they fry you for something a White person gets a major pass for, or they discard you the nanosecond you’re no longer useful for their virtue signaling (which is for other White people, remember, they don’t care about you) – or all three. They don’t really care, they got whatever they wanted out of that, who cares about you?

Also, here’s the thing about guilt, any guilt: it is a feeling you have in yourself. A person can try to stoke it in others but at the end, it is your emotion, created inside you. I have ran into this myself, White guilt from White people, simply because I was existing. I’m not guilting you that I’m from the inner city, that’s you. It’s simply a fact for me. I’m not guilting you by needing to take buses instead of have a car when I was a teen/young adult (when this was happening), that’s you. It’s simply a fact for me. Your White guilt is meaningless to me. It’s 100000000000% not my problem you think you’re a terrible person. Get a therapist or get over it. (And if you think, “get over it” means “go full MAGA”, the guilt was mainly theatre you were doing for yourself and dragging other people into it – you don’t actually have a conscience, just a manipulation drive.) White guilt gets heaped upon Black folks a lot, we do not ask for it. White guilt is hella performative anyways, very “oh woes, please someone (not someone White) assuage me of this emotional turmoil and guilt which pangs the very fiber of my being, oh dear, oh my”. It just sound like more emotional labor assistance from BIPoC, painted as guilt.

That’s kind of why my assistance of White guilt sounds very “it’s ‘down the road’, not ‘across the street’, Schick has awesome blades, have fun!” because when I don’t assuage the guilt like they were expecting but instead pour into it for my own entertainment in a way that visibly shows I don’t care since it is not my problem, guess what it turns into? Anger. Because they didn’t expect you were going to pull the “I’m actually a human being you’re dumping your bullsh#t onto and I will happily let it fall to the floor” card. Guilt can turn into anger but when it is flash paper quick, which White guilt turns into? That’s not actual guilt, it’s just manipulation. Because exactly what are you mad at? And why did you think it was my job to care? Real guilt can be very consuming, White guilt is just self-imposed privileged bs. If you want to self-flagellate for selfish reason, here’s let me help you and I’ll turn it into my comedy hour. Look, it’s either that or my time is being wasted, which I despise and is exactly what White guilt does for any BIPoC. Remember, you can always just broaden your horizons, unlearn messed up behavior on your own time, speak up when it happens and eradicate whatever “guilt” you have that way. It doesn’t bother me much to be this caustic because, hey, I’m not a person to them, I’m a walking political stance and unfortunately for them, I’m actually not a political stance, I’m a person, surprise! That method works a lot better than what my younger self did, which was be too nice. When I meet someone who is genuinely trying to be a better person, I’m way nicer. When it’s White guilt, set phasers to “fry”.

As it pertains to Ekpeki, it’s not really Ekpeki mobilizing a feeling that someone has in themselves. Guilt happens inside of others, you don’t put it in them. You can try but it’s on them to feel it. It’s just a post. I’ve seen way more fundraiser posts from others in general. And at least he’s fundraising to go to places to do business, not visit some vacation spot to kick back and do absolutely nothing.

And for awards, Ekpeki even won an NAACP Image award. That’s Black people voting for art within the diaspora. We don’t exactly go “Awwwwwwwww, you’re a little waif in stray from Nigeria, here’s an award from the Black American diaspora,” your art has to stand on its own merits. Obviously, traditional SFF would ignore that because it isn’t White-centered. To them, if it isn’t about them, it doesn’t exist and it definitely doesn’t matter unless forced to pay attention to it.

Other marginalized groups may not like talking about race and racism or other forms of prejudice like Black folks do (then they wonder how we got our own universities, media stations, art, historical laws passed (that they also benefit from), etc etc – and still call us lazy and uncouth 🙃) but it’s what we do. You get progress when you bring up issues. When Ekpeki posts about prejudice and things like that, he’s not saying anything that hasn’t already been said before from bigger and smaller people. These are some of the same folks who will whinge about Ekpeki but obsessed over Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” song. I bring that up because the person who mentioned that Ekpeki White Guilts for Money was a non-Black writer of color.

I’ve read both the original accuser, Erin, and Ekpeki replies – one thing struck me, Erin pulled White Woman Tears. If the term is new for you, here’s this and also this.

For me, that usually kills whatever you have to say. She felt like she didn’t belong as a White South African? That’s not Ekpeki’s problem, he’s a spec fic writer, not a therapist, she should try one of those. Plus she’s a White person in South Africa, space was literally carved out for her, out of other people and their land. Apartheid, hello? She’s acting like she was thrown in jail for 27 years in South African prison and finally got out – oh, wait, that was Nelson Mandela, whoops. This is what happens when you’re too nice, you extend a kind hand … and then they put out a 70+ page document on you they eventually have to rescind 🙃 “That is like so much of what I needed to hear right now. I’m actually crying” is one thing Erin said. Ekpeki was nice there because he wanted her to feel like she belonged as a fellow writer living in Africa. I completely get it because I know what it feels like to be an outcast – but I would have dropped the guillotine with that line.

There’s being appreciative and tears coming from that (especially when you can’t sell a story and one finally gets accepted after years of trying, I know exactly how that feels, big time) and then there is pulling a classic White Girl loop de loop that winds up dragging a Black person. She did the latter. She’s free to have emotions but it’s on her to control them, not use it as a tool. Looks like she didn’t cry during her 70+ pages or she would have probably fried her keyboard. Sounds like she knew where she belonged when it came to mobilizing White and White-appealing anger. And using the accusation of theft, that’s a classic one. Well, goodness, here she was saying she doesn’t belong when she seems to know how to fit in quite well when it suits her.

The anthology in question was for the African Diaspora – that means anyone who hails from Africa by blood or simply was born there. Black Voices is similar but not the same, it’s for African descendants. Black people, in other words. Looking at technicalities, Erin would count for the African Diaspora given that she’s born in South Africa, a country in the continent of Africa. So, going off technicalities, there’s no real issue there (unless the anthology was crammed with White people, then there would be a major issue there). Also, there was collaboration between her and Ekpeki, so still there’s someone who is actually Black (and African) on the story. It’s a collab. It’s still, going off technicalities again, a diaspora work.

I have seen Ekpeki worried about winding up on Writer’s Beware but mainly when kinks in the publishing system are going awry and it seems like he wants to fix them. Defendini of Fireside didn’t care, just hit the block button over and over and paint himself as a suffera when cornered about it. That’s noteworthy on Ekpeki’s part. Heck, even the owner, Gordon Van Gelder, of Fantasy and Science Fiction has been wonky with edits and payments, which also wound up on Writer’s Beware but people are still sending their stuff to them and hoping to get in. Actually, it was the editor Sheree Thomas, the first Black editor the publication had, who was catching heat left and right, even though she’s not the owner, and had to put up with an owner who didn’t seem to care unless badgered to. And the SFF community seemed pretty ok with that.

All in all, if there is something I need to see, send it. I can’t decide on what I don’t know about. But I also know things aren’t adding up somewhere and it’s the SFF community who is producing the funny math. Ekpeki didn’t have to inform me, he could have kept quiet and hoped I would not have seen anything. Others have done that with me before, it’s probably the most popular (and worst idea of a) route I’ve seen. But so far, I have not requested for my works to be pulled from anything Ekpeki is on and currently do not intend to unless I see something to give me proper justification and concern to do so.