Alexis Okeowo


Alexis Okeowo is an American journalist who is a staff writer at The New Yorker. She is the author of A Moonless, Starless Sky: Ordinary Woman and Men Fighting Extremism in Africa

Early life

Okeowo grew up in Alabama, the child of Nigerian parents. She attended Princeton University, graduating in 2006.

Career

From 2006-2007, Okeowo was a Princeton in Africa Fellow working at the New Vision newspaper in Uganda. In 2012, she won an Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship to write about gay rights in Africa. She became a staff writer at the New Yorker in 2015 and is working on a book about people standing up to extremism in Africa at the New America Foundation. Her 2017 book A Moonless, Starless Sky: Ordinary Woman and Men Fighting Extremism in Africa was reviewed favorably.
Her work has appeared in the anthologies Best American Travel Writing 2017 and Best American Sports Writing 2017.
The Christian Science Monitor called Okeowo one of the "finest war and foreign correspondents" at The New Yorker: "Alexis Okeowo, who was named a staff writer in late 2015, is continuing the tradition of the foreign correspondent who takes considerable personal risks driven by the conviction that all stories deserve to be told, particularly those that require a great deal of courage to uncover in the first place."

Awards and honors