Candice Iloh
Novelist & Poet
National Book Award Finalist
Readings &
Lecture Topics
-
Imagine It All Ends Tonight: On Breaking Form with Intention
-
What’s Your Problem: How To Use The Personal To Inspire Fiction
- The Anonymous Ones
- A Year In The Life / A Day In The life
- An Evening with Candice Iloh
Biography
“Candice Iloh’s writing invites the radical work of envisioning freedom… to do more than hope for and dream of freedom, but to plan for it. To bury my hands in the soil, in the vibrant verse. To go there.” —Safia Elhillo
“Candice Iloh’s beautifully crafted narrative(s) about family, belonging, sexuality, and telling our deepest truths in order to be whole is at once immensely readable and ultimately healing.” —Jacqueline Woodson
A first-generation Nigerian-American writer, Candice Iloh is the award-winning author of young adult novels Every Body Looking (Penguin Random House, 2020), which was a finalist for the National Book Award; Break This House (Penguin Random House, 2022); and Salt the Water (Penguin Random House, 2023), a Michael L. Printz Award Honor Book and a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year. Their debut picture book EMEKA: EAT EGUSI! will be published by Simon & Schuster in 2026.
Most recently, Salt the Water offers a narrative about dreaming in a world that has other plans for your time, your youth, and your future. It asks, what does it look like when a bunch of queer Black kids are allowed to dream? And what does it look like for them to confront the present circumstances of the people they love while still pursuing a wildly different future of their own?
In 2018, Iloh was awarded a Critical Breaks residency with Hi-ARTS to develop and perform a one-night-only stage production of ADA: On Stage, a multi-media one-person-show, introducing the audience to the then-in-progress themes of their now critically-acclaimed debut novel. They are an alum of the Rhode Island Writers Colony and their work has earned fellowships from Lambda Literary, VONA, Kimbilio Fiction and, most recently, The PEW Center for Arts & Heritage for 2023-2025. From 2016-2019, they completed a three-year residency as Writer-in-Residence at the Bronx Academy of Letters supporting high school students in the production of new and fresh youth-centered editorial & literary content.
With over a of decade experience as a k-12 in-classroom educator, Iloh has kept a focus on public school classrooms, athletic programs, detention centers, and youth shelters. Iloh has served as a workshop facilitator & interim program doctor with Voices UnBroken, a program that brought creative writing workshops to court-involved youth; a teaching artist with Urban Arts Partnership, an arts education organization that paired NYC-based youth with pre-professional creative resources and space to develop as artists; and a professional development specialist/trainer with Marquis Studios for educators working with young people, creatively, across a wide range of abilities.
Currently, Iloh teaches as a lecturer of nontraditional writing for young people at the University of Pennsylvania and serves as a faculty member in the MFA program at the University of Southern Maine.
Visit Author WebsiteVideos
Publications
Emeka, Eat Egusi!
Children's Book, 2026
From award-winning author Candice Iloh and New York Times illustrator Bea Jackson comes a warmhearted picture book celebration of traditional Nigerian home cooking and the surprising joys of trying new things, from the perspective of a boy on the autism spectrum.
Emeka’s favorite food is jollof rice. He eats it every day. “Emeka, come and try this egusi!” Mama and Papa urge. But orange rice is what Emeka knows. He doesn’t want anything different.
Then one day, Emeka comes home from school to find Mama in the kitchen waiting for him to help her cook egusi. One by one, new things go into the pot. There are so many colors and smells and sounds! And Emeka is a great helper. Could it be that trying something new might actually be…good?
Salt the Water
YA, 2023
“There are many things Iloh accomplishes in Salt The Water, but the most impressive, and arguably the most important, is that this unflinching portrayal of the necessary irreverence of Black teenagers on a complicated quest for self-actualization is one of the best I’ve seen in a long time.”—Jason Reynolds
Break This House
YA, 2022
Yaminah Okar left Obsidian and the wreckage of her family years ago. She and her father have made lives for themselves in Brooklyn. She thinks she’s moved on to bigger and better things. She thinks she’s finally left behind that city she would rather forget. But when a Facebook message about her estranged mother pierces Yaminah’s new bubble, memories of everything that happened before her parents’ divorce come roaring back. Now, Yaminah must finally reckon with the truth about her mother and the growing collapse of a place she once called home.
Every Body Looking
YA, 2020
When Ada leaves home for her freshman year at a Historically Black College, it’s the first time she’s ever been so far from her family—and the first time that she’s been able to make her own choices and to seek her place in this new world. As she stumbles deeper into the world of dance and explores her sexuality, she also begins to wrestle with her past—her mother’s struggle with addiction, her Nigerian father’s attempts to make a home for her. Ultimately, Ada discovers she needs to brush off the destiny others have chosen for her and claim full ownership of her body and her future.
Articles & Audio
Read What’s In Print
• What If It All Ends Tonight: what a verse novelist knows about disruption. – Booklist Online
• Review: Every Body Looking – Kirkus Reviews, starred
• Q&A: Candice Iloh, Author of Break This House – The Nerd Daily
• 7 Books by Trans and Nonbinary Authors to Read this Pride Month – Chicago Review of Books
Listen to Audio
• Identity and Authorship with Candice Iloh – The Mighty Writers
• Raw and honest storytelling with Candice Iloh – Bookmarked: A YA Podcast
Selected Writings
• Read “beliefs.” by Candice Iloh – Lambda Literary
• Read An Excerpt From Salt The Water by Candice Iloh – The Nerd Daily
Every Body Looking (an excerpt)
GRADUATION DAY
Just look at me
they got me out here
wearing a dress
heels
makeup
hope Mama’s proud
she sure does look like it
looking at me and squealing
like proud mamas do when
their baby looks something
like she came from them
her squeals bounce
from every wall of this hotel lobby
her screams shake from
her fragile body exploding
like she’s shocked by her own joy
unsteady heels click
against the tile toward the person she can say
was the best thing she ever did
with her life
Here’s the scene: I’m seventeen and graduating
from high school
and this weekend I learn to juggle
my father and his new wife
are on their way to the Home of the Chicago Doves
decked out, like they’re about to glide down the church’s red carpet
him in his crispiest suit, her bulging from a flowered dress
my baby brother dressed
as Dad’s mini identical twin
belted in the back seat
of my father’s golden Toyota Camry
is giddy knowing nothing
about what day it is
or how his big sister
will survive it
after picking up her own mommy
keeping her seated somewhere
she can fidget
far from his side of the family
Mama fidgets
in my passenger seat
more on edge than me
maybe cause it’s been
like five years since we’ve seen
each other but she is here
scoffs under her breath
thinking, just like her
this hoopty is proof
of yet another thing
I don’t need
shrugs away small thoughts
not knowing
Dad demanded
I save and buy my first Camry
myself
sits and tugs
at her lopsided wig
pulls down the mirror
reapplies bloodred lipstick
smudges some on her cheeks
with her fingers
and I thank god knowing
without this
I may not
recognize her
We pull into my high school’s parking lot
for the last day I will ever have to smile at these people like I ever belonged here / for the ten minutes it takes Mama and me to get to the stands along the football field, a place she has never seen / I imagine the sounds of our heels to be / like a song we are for once dancing to together / today / I’m not angry / at her slurred speech / I’m not angry / at her missing teeth / I’m not angry / at her fuss / I’m not angry / that she looks nothing like / the last time I saw her / or that / I don’t know when the next time will be / for the ten minutes it takes Mama and me to get to the stands along the football field / I’m just happy we’re both here / alive
