| Intro | British author |
| Is | Writer |
| From | United Kingdom |
| Type | Literature |
| Gender | female |
| Birth | 10 December 1984, Nigeria |
| Age: | 35 years |
Helen Olajumoke Oyeyemi (born 10 December 1984) is a British novelist.
Life and writings
Oyeyemi wrote her first novel, The Icarus Girl, while still at school studying for her A-levels at Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School. While studying social and political sciences at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University, Oyeyemi saw two of her plays, Juniper’s Whitening and Victimese, performed by fellow students to critical acclaim and subsequently published by Methuen.
In 2007 Bloomsbury published Oyeyemi’s second novel, The Opposite House, which is inspired by Cuban mythology. Her third novel, White is for Witching, described as having “roots in Henry James and Edgar Allan Poe”, was published by Picador in May 2009. A fourth novel, Mr Fox, was published by Picador in June 2011, and a fifth, Boy, Snow, Bird, in 2014.
Oyeyemi’s latest book, the story collection What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, was released in 2016.
Professional awards and recognition
Her novel White Is For Witching was a 2009 Shirley Jackson Award finalist and won a 2010 Somerset Maugham Award. In 2009 Oyeyemi was recognized as one of the women on Venus Zine’s “25 under 25” list. In 2013 she was included in the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list. Boy, Snow, Bird was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 2014. What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours won the PEN Open Book Award: for an exceptional book-length work of literature by an author of color published in 2016.
Oyeyemi was a judge on the Booktrust Independent Foreign Fiction Prize for 2015, and served as a judge for the 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
In a 2016 interview with Slate, Oyeyemi was named as one of the “most gifted” writers at work today. Since 2014 her home has been in Prague.