Penguin Random House: Riverhead Author Akwaeke Emezi on Cover of TIME’s Next Generation Leaders Issue

Akwaeke Emezi, the New York Times bestselling author of The Death of Vivek Oji and their nonfiction debut DEAR SENTHURAN: A Black Spirit Memoir (Riverhead Books, on sale June 8), graces the cover of TIME Magazine’s annual Next Generation Leaders issue. This special double-issue hit newsstands all over the globe this month and focuses on an exclusive group of young artists, athletes and activists who are changing the world.

As part of their introduction to the cover story TIME Magazine said: “Akwaeke Emezi has taken off their masks—the ones we all wear that grin and lie, as poet Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote. The ones that hide and shade more than our cheeks and eyes, camouflaging the traumas we’ve triumphed over. The masks we don to survive a white-supremacist world that simply can’t hold our Black, queer, trans and godly brilliance… Dear Senthuran is a brutally honest and vulnerable testimony of survival, of the rejuvenating variety that inspires and activates.”

Already named a most anticipated book by Harper’s Bazaar, The Advocate, Marie Claire, Entertainment Weekly and others, this major profile is the first of a wide variety of national media moments still to come for DEAR SENTHURAN, including coverage from NPR, The New York Times Book Review, Washington Post, Shondaland, Apartment Therapy, and more.