Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki Accused of A Slew of Ethics Complaints *UPDATE*: SFWA's X Account Goes Protected

78-page report filed by author Erin Cairns alleges years of plagiarism and uncredited efforts

A bombshell report citing years of unethical behavior hit the internet yesterday, courtesy of author Erin Cairns, who accused recently elected SFWA Director-At-Large and mainstream SF darling Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki of plagiarism, deception and unprofessionalism. Cairns has made the document, which includes over fifty pages of screenshots of private messages, publicly available on Google Drive, which we have linked below:

READ ERIN CAIRNS’ REPORT HERE

Cairns, a white South African native who moved to Texas during her early childhood, initially connected with Ekpeki via social media as a writing peer in 2018, and the two exchanged stories, offering each other critique. This, she says, gradually evolved to her editing a series of stories, which she was not told were to be featured in an anthology referred to in the document as “Anthology D”.

Of this, Cairns says: “When he told me a story I’d worked on was going to be in the anthology, I questioned him about what I’d been doing. He told me that for my help and work, my name would be in the acknowledgments of the book. When the book was released, I bought a copy, and my name was nowhere to be found.”

Cairns goes on to say that Ekpeki continued to exploit her easygoing nature, and that she was reluctant to cut ties with him given his burgeoning celebrity status:

“None of the work I did for Ekpeki has ever been publicly acknowledged . . . It was a lot of work, it was hard work, and sometimes it was work I did not believe in, but there were no contracts. I knew I should say no when it became clear I wasn’t going to get credit, but I didn’t. I tried once, but he sent me a story anyway, and I did it. By that point it felt like a firmer ‘no’ was going to cost me a connection in the writing world I had already poured a ton of time and work into.”

She maintains that in 2021 Ekpeki would tell her that he would have published a story from Cairns for Anthology D, but Cairns says she did not submit to the anthology because she was already editing a story for it, and the submission guidelines were categorized as “own voice”, or specific to black authors, specifically stating that the submission guidelines advised “white South Africans need not apply.” This after-the-fact attempt to soothe Cairn’s feelings of betrayal would become a regular practice in the years to come, as her involvement with Ekpeki would continue to result in vaguely grand promises that would never come to fruition.

“I Tried To Steal and I Got Caught”

Cairns goes on to say that when she questioned Ekpeki about the stories she’d been editing for him, he gave vague, evasive answers, and promptly redirected the conversation by mentioning that he was being courted by several prestigious publications seeking submissions from him, and that perhaps he and Cairns should co-author something, while simultaneously telling Cairns that some of her work was unpublishable. I’ll give you one guess as to why (emphasis mine):

“In the same conversation he brought up the issues of some my stories perhaps not being publishable because they are told in an African style. I am a white South African, and moved to America with my parents when I was young. What he was saying made me feel uncomfortable, but I explained the red flags away to myself as this was justifying good changes and contributions he could make to a manuscript. But it embedded itself in my consciousness as a rebuke, that I should not have written these stories and that they did not belong to me.”

What was Ekpeki’s proposed solution? Take one of Cairn’s already written stories, The Mask of Our Demons, and change some of the names around. Ekpeki gave suggestions, which Cairns made, then sent the draft back to him for further changes (“I found out much later there were no further changes”). Ekpeki told Cairns the story was being submitted to a prestigious publication (“Market 1”) in the document, and would eventually claim the story was rejected in December of 2021. Ekpeki then submitted to the aforementioned “black voices magazine” (“Market 2”) a more niche non-paying market, where it was accepted. While Cairns found herself struggling through health issues through the first two months of 2022, Ekpeki continued to demand edits be made to the story while never telling her it had been accepted to a wholly different, far more ethnically sensitive market:

“ . . . later he refused to acknowledge that this magazine was ‘ownvoices’. I only saw these messages now, while going back through the screenshots. Still, I said yes on the understanding I’d be put in contact with the editors and magazine23, which never happened, though he kept promising it . . .

For the next 2 months I was engaged with health concerns, and he then contacted me on February 25th to tell me that the story “The Mask of Our Demon” had been accepted on February 5th and that I should do the rewrites that day because Editor S was ‘cranky’ and he didn’t want to disappoint them.”

Cairns asked that Ekpeki put her in touch with the publication’s editor, which he repeatedly avoided, citing everything from not wanting to bother the higher-ups, assuring her that business was simply done this way, to flat asking her to ‘trust me, bro’ (“He asked me to chill out and trust him, because this was how he worked,”).

Frustrated, Cairns finally reached out to the magazine, who did not reply to her, but did reach out to Ekpeki. When she asked why that happened, he—are you sitting down?—made it about race:

“I asked him outright why they weren’t willing to talk to me. In response, he abandoned the pretense of the market being open to a submission from me and told me ‘It’s an African exclusive space’ and the ‘politics of white Africans is complicated’. But he’d just spent months obfuscating this issue between me and the magazine. He said he was ‘trying to make sure things went smoothly till publication’.”

Cairns demanded the story be pulled. Ekpeki acquiesced, saying, according to Cairns’ report, ‘It looks like I tried to steal and I got caught.’”

Swift and Fierce Backlash

It seemed Ekpeki was already experiencing consequences even while this was happening with Cairns; she mentions his being removed from a project in the document, and today on BlueSky and X Tonya Liburd announced that she, along with authors Frabrice Guerrier and G.E. Condé were abandoning a Caribbean Pantheology anthology Ekpeki was scheduled to helm, thought she doesn’t directly cite Cairns’ report being the cause.

It’s so bad that Human Wedgie and Hugo award loser Jason Sanford, one of Ekpeki’s staunchest allies who has helped organize a number of GoFundMe campaigns for Ekpeki, savaged him in the wake of Cairns’ report on his Patreon page, citing a number of other authors who are echoing Cairns’ experiences and sentiments, like They/them queer non-binary aero/ace sci-fi/fantasy/horror author Merc Fenn Wolfmoor and the comparative normal seeming Varja Chandrasekera both dragging the editor on X-alternative safe space, BlueSky, and there’s plenty more where they came from.

According to bot-infested File 770, Ekpeki is preparing a statement to be issued later addressing the allegations. We’ll keep you updated as things develop.

UPDATE: Others have now come forward accusing Ekpeki. SFWA has set their X account to protected.

I’m so sorry, SFWA.

The list of people coming forward condemning Ekpeki continues to grow, with some saying they were reluctant to call out his antics for fear of being labeled a racist: