Ani Kayode Somtochukwu is an award-winning Nigerian writer and Queer Liberation activist. His work interrogates themes of queer identity, resistance and liberation and has appeared in literary magazines across Africa, Europe, Asia and North America. He was longlisted for the 2017 Awele Creative Trust Prize and the 2020 Afritondo Short Story Prize. He was shortlisted for the 2017 Erbacce Prize for Poetry, the 2020 ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award, and the 2020 Toyin Falola Prize. His debut novel manuscript AND THEN HE SANG A LULLABY was awarded the 2021 James Currey Prize for African Literature and was published by Roxane Gay Books (Grove Atlantic) and Grove UK in June 2023.

Ani is an openly gay queer liberation activist. He was one of the conveners of the End Homophobia in Nigeria campaign, and is the founder and Central Committee Chair of the Queer Union for Economic and Social Transformation (QUEST9ja), a radical queer collective organizing towards queer liberation in Nigeria.​ ​He was a finalist for the 2020 Prize for Difference and Diversity and was the recipient of the 2019 SOGIESC Rights Activist of the Year Award presented by the Initiative for Equal Rights (TIERs).