Derek Owusu

Derek Owusu is a British-Ghanaian writer born in 1990 in London. He studied philosophy and psychology and was a founding member of the literary collective Octavia Poetry Collective. He is the editor of Safe: On Black British Men Reclaiming Space (2019), an anthology that brought together essays, poetry, and photography about Black British masculinity. That Reminds Me (2019, Stormbird Press), his debut novel, is based on his own experience of mental breakdown and recovery in a psychiatric ward, following a character called K through disintegration and reconstruction in experimental fragments that move between voices, timelines, and registers. It won the Desmond Elliott Prize in 2020 and was praised for its formal courage and its unflinching portrayal of mental illness, Blackness, and belonging. Owusu works as a mental health advocate and writes widely about race and psychology in British culture.