Zainab Ayoza Omaki
Biography
I hold a PhD in English, with specializations in Creative Writing and Women's and Gender Studies, from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (2025), an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, and a BA in Communication Studies from the University of Ghana, Legon.
My creative practice spans fiction, nonfiction, and film. I co-wrote the feature film 4th Republic (Griot Studios, 2019) and served as head writer on the television adaptation of Abubakar Imam's canonical novel Magana Jari Ce. My short fiction and essays have been published widely in literary journals and anthologies, and my scholarly work addresses African literature, postcolonial aesthetics, and questions of cultural representation. I have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and I have received several fellowships including the Krause Writing Fellowship, the Othmer Fellowship, the Jan Michalski Foundation Residency in Switzerland, and the Miles Morland African Writers' Scholarship. I am currently at work on my first novel, an exploration of female friendship in northern Nigeria.
I have mentored emerging writers through the Adroit Mentorship Program and designed multi-genre workshops for BAME student writers through the Nebraska Arts Collective.
Research Interests
My current projects sit at the intersection of storytelling, gender, and African cultural life. My debut novel explores female friendship in northern Nigeria, tracing the intimate and political dimensions of women's relationships across generations.
Alongside this, I am developing an animated children's screenplay rooted in West African folklore and imaginative worlds. Across both projects, I am interested in how narrative form— whether literary fiction or screen— can centre African women's interiority and reimagine the stories we tell children about who they are and where they come from.