Aiwanose Odafen
Born in Lagos, Nigeria, Aiwanose Odafen is an MFA fiction student at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. She has contributed to published non-fiction works and participated in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus Trust Writing Workshop. She was longlisted for the 2020 Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize.
As a high school student, she was a gold and silver medalist in the National Mathematics Olympiad Competition. She graduated top of her class with a first-class degree in Accounting and is certified with the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, United Kingdom. She holds an MBA from the Said Business School, University of Oxford.
Prior to becoming a writer, Aiwanose worked as a consultant across industries, most recently, in the pu
If you like author Aiwanose Odafen here is the list of authors you may also like
Buy books on AmazonTotal similar authors (60)
-
Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah
Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah is a Ghanaian feminist writer and blogger. She co-founded award-winning blog Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women and has written for The Guardian and Open Democracy. Sekyiamah is the Director for Communications manager at the Association for Women's Rights in Development and a member of the Black Feminism Forum Working Group which organised the historic first Black Feminist Forum in Bahia, Brazil.
Buy books on Amazon -
Nikki May
Born in Bristol and raised in Lagos, Nikki May is Anglo-Nigerian.
Buy books on Amazon
Her critically acclaimed debut novel WAHALA won the Comedy Women In Print New Voice Prize, was longlisted for the Goldsboro Glass Bell Award and the Diverse Books Award, and is being turned into a major BBC TV drama series.
THIS MOTHERLESS LAND is her second novel. It was shortlisted for the 2025 Edward Stanford Fiction with a Sense of Place Prize, longlisted for the Nigeria Prize for Literature and is being adapted for TV.
Nikki lives in Dorset with her husband, two standard Schnauzers, and way too many books. She should be writing, but is probably reading.
You can follow Nikki on X: @NikkiOMay
Or Instagram: @nikkimaywriter -
Chibundu Onuzo
Chibundu Onuzo was born in Nigeria in 1991 in Lagos and is the youngest of four children. She is a History graduate from King's College London and is currently an MSc student in Public Policy at the University College of London.
Buy books on Amazon
(from http://freduagyeman.blogspot.com/2013...) -
Ore Agbaje-Williams
ORE AGBAJE-WILLIAMS is a British-Nigerian writer and editor from North London who has written for gal—dem, Glamour UK and Wasafiri magazine. Her fiction writing has also been featured on Reflex Fiction. Her first novel, The Three of Us, was published by Jonathan Cape (UK), Putnam (US) and Penguin Random House Canada in May 2023.
Buy books on Amazon -
Peace Adzo Medie
Peace Adzo Medie is a Ghanaian writer and senior lecturer in gender and international politics at the University of Bristol in England. Prior to that she was a research fellow at the University of Ghana. She has published several short stories, and her book Global Norms and Local Action: The Campaigns to End Violence Against Women in Africa was published by Oxford University Press in 2020. She is an award-winning scholar and has been awarded several fellowships. She holds a PhD in public and international affairs from the University of Pittsburgh and a BA in geography from the University of Ghana. She was born in Liberia.
Buy books on Amazon -
Yomi Adegoke
Yomi Adegoke is a British journalist and author. She has written for The Guardian, The Independent and the Pool.
Buy books on Amazon
Of Nigerian heritage, Adegoke was born in East London and raised in Croydon. She attended the University of Warwick and studied law.
She published her debut novel, The List, in 2023. -
Tsitsi Dangarembga
Spent part of her childhood in England. She began her education there, but concluded her A-levels in a missionary school back home, in the town of Mutare. She later studied medicine at Cambridge University, but became homesick and returned home as Zimbabwe's black-majority rule began in 1980.
Buy books on Amazon
She took up psychology at the University of Zimbabwe, of whose drama group she was a member. She also held down a two-year job as a copywriter at a marketing agency. This early writing experience gave her an avenue for expression: she wrote numerous plays, such as The Lost of the Soil, and then joined the theatre group Zambuko, and participated in the production of two plays, Katshaa and Mavambo.
In 1985, Dangarembga published a short story in Sweden cal -
Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi
Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi was born and raised in Ibadan, Nigeria. A finalist for the 2009 PEN/Studzinski Award, her stories have been published in New Writing from Africa 2009, Ploughshares, and mentioned in The Best American Short Stories 2018. Her poetry has appeared in the Massachusetts Review, the Indiana Review and Wasafiri. She holds bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in computer science. Omolola is a Professor of Preventive and Social Medicine at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in South Los Angeles, where she teaches and conducts research on using biomedical informatics to reduce health disparities.
Buy books on Amazon
Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions is her first book. It was selected as a New York Times Editors Choice, made T -
Foluso Agbaje
Foluso Agbaje is a British-Nigerian writer exploring how choices and connections shape who we are. After studying at the Faber Academy, she completed her debut novel, The Parlour Wife. Her background in Accounting, an MSc in Management and Human Resources from LSE, and work in Finance and HR offer perspectives that continue to inform her storytelling. Away from her desk, Foluso enjoys visiting bookshops and museums, watching period dramas, and seeking inspiration in new places.
Buy books on Amazon -
Chika Unigwe
Chika Unigwe was born in Enugu, Nigeria, and now lives in Turnhout, Belgium, with her husband and four children. She writes in English and Dutch.
Buy books on Amazon
In April 2014 she was selected for the Hay Festival's Africa39 list of 39 Sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define future trends in African literature.
.
Unigwe holds a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and an MA from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. She also holds a PhD from the University of Leiden, The Netherlands, having completed a thesis entitled "In the shadow of Ala. Igbo women writing as an act of righting" in 2004.
Chika Unigwe is een dichter en schrijfster, geboren in Nigeria en wonende in België (z -
Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani
Adaobi Tricia Obinne Nwaubani (born in 1976) is a Nigerian novelist, humorist, essayist and journalist. Her debut novel, I Do Not Come to you by Chance, won the 2010 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book (Africa), a Betty Trask First Book award,and was named by the Washington Post as one of the Best Books of 2009. Nwaubani is the first contemporary African writer on the global stage to have got an international book deal while still living in her home country.
Buy books on Amazon
(from Wikipedia) -
Yejide Kilanko
A writer of fiction and poetry, Kilanko’s debut novel, Daughters Who Walk This Path, a Canadian national bestseller, was longlisted for the 2016 Nigeria Literature Prize.
Buy books on Amazon
Her work includes a novella, Chasing Butterflies (2015), two children’s picture books, There Is An Elephant In My Wardrobe (2019), and Juba and The Fireball (2020). Her short fiction is in the anthology, New Orleans Review 2017: The African Literary Hustle. Her latest novel, A Good Name, is available now
Kilanko lives in Ontario, Canada, where she practices as a social worker. -
Ukamaka Olisakwe
Ukamaka Olisakwe is a Nigerian novelist, short story writer and screenwriter. In 2014 she was chosen as one of Sub-Saharan Africa’s most promising writers under the age of 40 by Africa 39. She was born in Kano, Nigeria, and in 2016, was a resident at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program.
Buy books on Amazon -
Adesuwa O'man Nwokedi
The Writer, who became an Engineer, who became an Investment Banker, who became a Fertility Spokesperson, who became…a Writer.
Buy books on Amazon
That has been the journey of A. T. Nwokedi, aka The Fertile Chick. A self confessed hopeless romantic, when she is not creating new characters, she devotes her time to creating memories with her husband and their three children. -
Fatima Bala
Fatima Bala is a lecturer, poet, and writer who lives in Canada with her family and a pet fish named Fishy. Her books have received starred reviews from The Los Angeles Tribune, London Post, and New York Weekly. She graduated from Algonquin College, Vancouver Island University, and Stanford, where she studied Tourism, Business Management, and International Women's Rights. She loves traveling, playing board games, and watching movies with unanticipated twists.
Buy books on Amazon
Her Instagram account is @aka.fatima.bala -
Foluso Agbaje
Foluso Agbaje is a British-Nigerian writer exploring how choices and connections shape who we are. After studying at the Faber Academy, she completed her debut novel, The Parlour Wife. Her background in Accounting, an MSc in Management and Human Resources from LSE, and work in Finance and HR offer perspectives that continue to inform her storytelling. Away from her desk, Foluso enjoys visiting bookshops and museums, watching period dramas, and seeking inspiration in new places.
Buy books on Amazon -
Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia
Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia is a lawyer, academic, and writer. She holds a doctorate in law from Dalhousie University and works in the areas of health, gender, and violence against women and children. Cheluchi divides her time between Lagos and Halifax.
Buy books on Amazon -
Chika Unigwe
Chika Unigwe was born in Enugu, Nigeria, and now lives in Turnhout, Belgium, with her husband and four children. She writes in English and Dutch.
Buy books on Amazon
In April 2014 she was selected for the Hay Festival's Africa39 list of 39 Sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define future trends in African literature.
.
Unigwe holds a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and an MA from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. She also holds a PhD from the University of Leiden, The Netherlands, having completed a thesis entitled "In the shadow of Ala. Igbo women writing as an act of righting" in 2004.
Chika Unigwe is een dichter en schrijfster, geboren in Nigeria en wonende in België (z -
Yejide Kilanko
A writer of fiction and poetry, Kilanko’s debut novel, Daughters Who Walk This Path, a Canadian national bestseller, was longlisted for the 2016 Nigeria Literature Prize.
Buy books on Amazon
Her work includes a novella, Chasing Butterflies (2015), two children’s picture books, There Is An Elephant In My Wardrobe (2019), and Juba and The Fireball (2020). Her short fiction is in the anthology, New Orleans Review 2017: The African Literary Hustle. Her latest novel, A Good Name, is available now
Kilanko lives in Ontario, Canada, where she practices as a social worker. -
Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani
Adaobi Tricia Obinne Nwaubani (born in 1976) is a Nigerian novelist, humorist, essayist and journalist. Her debut novel, I Do Not Come to you by Chance, won the 2010 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book (Africa), a Betty Trask First Book award,and was named by the Washington Post as one of the Best Books of 2009. Nwaubani is the first contemporary African writer on the global stage to have got an international book deal while still living in her home country.
Buy books on Amazon
(from Wikipedia) -
Niq Mhlongo
Mhlongo was born in Midway-Chiawelo, Soweto, the seventh of nine children, and raised in Soweto. His father, who died when Mhlongo was a teenager, worked as a post-office sweeper. Mhlongo was sent to Limpopo Province, the province his mother came from, to finish high school. Initially failing his matriculation exam in October 1990,[1] Mhlongo completed his matric at Malenga High School in 1991. He studied African literature and political studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, gaining a BA in 1996. In 1997 he enrolled to study law there, transferring to the University of Cape Town the following year. In 2000 he discontinued university study to write his first novel, Dog Eat Dog.[2]
Buy books on Amazon
He has been called, "one of the most high-spirited a -
Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀
Ayobami Adebayo's stories have appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies, and one was highly commended in the 2009 Commonwealth short story competition. She holds BA and MA degrees in Literature in English from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife. She also has an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia where she was awarded an international bursary for Creative Writing. Ayobami has been the recipient of fellowships and residencies from Ledig House, Hedgebrook, Threads, Ebedi Hills and Ox-Bow.
Buy books on Amazon
STAY WITH ME- UK (Canongate, March 2017), Nigeria (Ouida Books, April 2017), US (Knopf, August 2017), KENYA (Kwani?, August 2017) is her debut novel. -
Amma Darko
Amma Darko (born 1956) is an African novelist.
Buy books on Amazon
She was born in Koforidua, Ghana, and grew up in Accra. She studied in Kumasi, where she received her diploma in 1980. Then she worked for the Science and Technology Center in Kumasi. During the eighties, she lived and worked for some time in Germany. She has since returned to Accra.
(from Wikipedia) -
Francesca Ekwuyasi
Francesca Ekwuyasi is a writer and multidisciplinary artist from Lagos, Nigeria. Her work explores themes of faith, family, queerness, consumption, loneliness, and belonging.
Buy books on Amazon
Ekwuyasi's debut novel, Butter Honey Pig Bread was longlisted for the 2020 Giller Prize and is a contender for CBC's 2021 Canada Reads competition.
Her writing has been published in Winter Tangerine Review, Brittle Paper, Transition Magazine, the Malahat Review, Visual Art News, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, GUTS magazine, the Puritan, forthcoming from Canadian Art, and elsewhere. Her story Ọrun is Heaven was longlisted for the 2019 Journey Prize.
Supported through the National Film Board's (NFB) Film Maker's Assistance Program (FAP) and the Fabienne Colas Foundation, her short do -
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, a Ugandan novelist and short story writer, has a PhD from Lancaster University. She is a lecturer in Creative Writing at Lancaster University and lives in Manchester with her husband Damian and son Jordan.
Buy books on Amazon
Her first novel, Kintu, won the Kwani Manuscript Prize in 2013 and was longlisted for the 2014 Etisalat Prize for Literature. Her story Let's Tell This Story Properly won the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. In 2018 she was awarded a Windham-Campbell Prize in the fiction category. In 2021, her novel The First Woman won the Jhalak Prize.
Makumbi's writing is largely based on oral traditions. She realised that oral traditions were so broad and would be able to frame all her writing regardless of subject, form o -
Lola Akinmade Åkerström
Award-winning Nigerian-American visual storyteller and international bestselling author based in Stockholm, Sweden.
Buy books on Amazon -
Okey Ndibe
Okey Ndibe teaches African and African Diaspora literatures at Brown University. He earned MFA and PhD degrees from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and has taught at Connecticut College, Bard College, Trinity College, and the University of Lagos (as a Fulbright scholar). He is the author of Arrows of Rain and Foreign Gods, Inc. He has served on the editorial board of Hartford Courant where his essays won national and state awards. He lives in West Hartford, CT, with his wife, Sheri, and their three children.
Buy books on Amazon -
NoViolet Bulawayo
NoViolet Bulawayo (pen name of Elizabeth Tshele) is a Zimbabwean author, and Stegner Fellow at Stanford University (2012–2014).
Buy books on Amazon
Bulawayo won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story "Hitting Budapest," about a gang of street children in a Zimbabwean shantytown.
Her first novel We Need New Names (2013) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, making her the first African female writer to earn this distinction.
She has begun work on a memoir project. -
Eloghosa Osunde
Eloghosa Osunde is a Nigerian writer and multidisciplinary artist.
Buy books on Amazon -
Samuel Kolawole
Samuel Kọ́láwọlé was born and raised in Ibadan, Nigeria. His debut novel, The Road to the Salt Sea, won the 2025 Whiting Award for Fiction, was a finalist for the International Book Awards, was longlisted for the 2025 Aspen Words Literary Prize, and is currently a finalist for the 2025 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel.
Buy books on Amazon
Other honors for his work include being a finalist for the Caine Prize for African Writing, the Graywolf Press Africa Prize, and the UK's The First Novel Prize.
He studied at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and holds a Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing with distinction from Rhodes University, South Africa; is a graduate of the MFA in Writing and Publishing at Vermont College of Fine Arts; and earned his PhD in -
Ama Ata Aidoo
Ama Ata Aidoo was a Ghanaian author, poet, playwright, politician, and academic. She was Secretary for Education in Ghana from 1982 to 1983 under Jerry Rawlings's PNDC administration. Her first play, The Dilemma of a Ghost, was published in 1965, making Aidoo the first published female African dramatist. As a novelist, she won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 1992 with the novel Changes. In 2000, she established the Mbaasem Foundation in Accra to promote and support the work of African women writers.
Buy books on Amazon
(from Wikipedia) -
Sefi Atta
Sefi Atta was born 1964 in Lagos, Nigeria. She was educated there, in England and the United States. Her father Abdul-Aziz Atta was the Secretary to Federal Government and Head of the Civil Service until his death in 1972, and she was raised by her mother Iyabo Atta.
Buy books on Amazon
A former chartered accountant and CPA, she is a graduate of the creative writing program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. Her short stories have appeared in journals like Los Angeles Review and Mississipi Review and have won prizes from Zoetrope and Red Hen Press. Her radio plays have been broadcast by the BBC. She is the winner of PEN International's 2004/2005 David TK Wong Prize and in 2006, her debut novel Everything Good Will Come was awarded the inaugural Wole Soyinka Pr -
Chinelo Okparanta
Chinelo Okparanta was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, and relocated to the United States at the age of ten. She received her BS from The Pennsylvania State University, her MA from Rutgers University, and her MFA from the University of Iowa. She was one of Granta's six New Voices for 2012 and her stories have appeared in Granta, The New Yorker, Tin House, Subtropics, and elsewhere.
Buy books on Amazon -
Elnathan John
Elnathan is a writer and lawyer living in spaces between in Nigeria and Germany. Mostly.
Buy books on Amazon
His works have appeared in Hazlitt, Per Contra, Le Monde Diplomatique, FT and the Caine Prize for African Writing anthology 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016. He writes weekly political satire for the Nigerian newspaper Daily Trust on Sunday (and any other publication that PAYS him). Except you are The New Yorker, he considers it violence of unimaginable proportions to ask him to write for free. He has never won anything. This record was almost disrupted by the Caine Prize when they accidentally allowed his story on the shortlist in 2013 and again in 2015. Of course, both times, he did not win. He has been shortlisted and longlisted for a few other prizes, but -
Chigozie Obioma
Chigozie Obioma was born in Akure, Nigeria. His two novels, The Fishermen (2015) and An Orchestra of Minorities (2019) were shortlisted for The Booker Prize and have been translated into 30 languages. He has an LA Times book prize, the prestigious Internationalerpris, FT/Oppenheimer prize for fiction, an NAACP Image award and has been nominated for two dozen prizes for fiction. He was a judge of the Booker prize in 2021. He is a Distinguished writer in Residence at Wesleyan University, CT, the James E. Ryan Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and the program director of the Oxbelly Writers retreat. His third novel, The Road to the Country, will be published in 2024.
Buy books on Amazon -
Ukamaka Olisakwe
Ukamaka Olisakwe is a Nigerian novelist, short story writer and screenwriter. In 2014 she was chosen as one of Sub-Saharan Africa’s most promising writers under the age of 40 by Africa 39. She was born in Kano, Nigeria, and in 2016, was a resident at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program.
Buy books on Amazon -
Buchi Emecheta
Buchi Emecheta OBE was a Nigerian novelist who has published over 20 books, including Second-Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). Her themes of child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education have won her considerable critical acclaim and honours, including an Order of the British Empire in 2005. Emecheta once described her stories as "stories of the world…[where]… women face the universal problems of poverty and oppression, and the longer they stay, no matter where they have come from originally, the more the problems become identical."
Buy books on Amazon
From 1965 to 1969, Emecheta worked as a library officer for the British Museum in London. From 1969 to 1976 she -
Mary Hogan
Though an Okie by birth, I grew up in Southern California in the era of baby oil tans. Except mine. My youth was filled with sunburns and other red-faced events. Now, I live in the blessed shade of skyscrapers. New York City. Where I was meant to be all along.
Buy books on Amazon
At the risk of sounding bigheaded, I love GOOD books. I like to read writers who inspire me to read their sentences over and over just for the joy of it. You know that feeling? Like, wow, how did she think of that phrasing?
That said, I joined Goodreads because I'd become a genre snob. There are good Sci-fi novels, right? Historical? To my delight, I've found that to be true. As in life, when you open up, the world opens with you. Or so said Oprah. Before she abandoned us. :)
On a perso -
Adesuwa O'man Nwokedi
The Writer, who became an Engineer, who became an Investment Banker, who became a Fertility Spokesperson, who became…a Writer.
Buy books on Amazon
That has been the journey of A. T. Nwokedi, aka The Fertile Chick. A self confessed hopeless romantic, when she is not creating new characters, she devotes her time to creating memories with her husband and their three children. -
Abi Ishola-Ayodeji
Abi Ishola-Ayodeji is an Emmy award-winning producer, brand builder, and storyteller.
Buy books on Amazon
Her debut novel, Patience is a Subtle Thief, was named one of BuzzFeed’s best books of May, 2022. -
Jendella Benson
Jendella Benson is a British-Nigerian writer and editor from Birmingham, now based in London. She is Head of Editorial at Black Ballad – the award-winning digital media platform and online community for black women in the UK and beyond. In her role, she has commissioned and edited hundreds of black women and non-binary journalists and writers from across the globe and worked with brands such as Dove, Comic Relief and Google.
Buy books on Amazon
Jendella started her writing career as a columnist for Media Diversified, MTV UK, and Christian Today and has since written for The Guardian, The Sunday Times STYLE Magazine, The Telegraph and The Independent. She is the author of two novels – HOPE AND GLORY and ALL THAT WE’VE GOT – and her short story, Kindling, was pub -
Caroline Mackenzie
Caroline Mackenzie is a Trinidadian writer whose short fiction has appeared in publications around the world. In 2017 she was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and she won first prize for fiction in the 2018 Small Axe Literary Competition. Her debut novel ONE YEAR OF UGLY is currently available in hardback as well as audio book and e-book formats.
Buy books on Amazon
Caroline currently lives in Trinidad and is cracking away at novel #2. You can follow her on Instagram at @carolinemackenziewrites. -
Bisi Adjapon
Author of The Teller of Secrets. Top 10 Amazon Editors' Choice, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Pop Sugar, Ms. Magazine, ALA, American Booksellers Association, Globe and Mail, Mail and Guardian, BiblioLifestyle, Book Buzz. DAUGHTER IN EXILE will be released January 31, 2023
Buy books on Amazon -
David G. Maillu
David Maillu was born in colonial Kenya on 19 October 1939. He went to school at age 12, at a Salvation Army School. After four years, he sat for a national colonial education examination, called Common Entrance Examination after which he joined Intermediate School whereby we sat for the Kenya African Primary Education (KAPE). There would be another examination after two years, called Kenya Junior Secondary Education, then finally the East Africa Cambridge School Certificate examination (The O-Level).
Buy books on Amazon
He went to a technical school to Painting and Decorating, which took 3 years. He also enrolled for the British Tutorial College, to study for the High School education. Right from his Intermediate and Technical Schools, he developed passion in -
Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye
Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye (1928 – 30 November 2015) was an English/Kenyan novelist, essayist and poet.
Buy books on Amazon
Born Marjorie King in 1928 in Southampton, England, and died on 1st December 2015 in Kenya[.] Marjorie travelled to Kenya to work as a missionary in 1954. She worked at the S.J. Moore Bookshop on Government Road, now Moi Avenue in Nairobi, for some years. There she organised readings which were attended by, among others, Okot P'Bitek, the author of Song of Lawino, and Jonathan Kariara, a Kenyan poet. She met Macgoye, a medical doctor, and the two were married in 1960. In 1971, an anthology entitled Poems from East Africa included the acclaimed poem "A Freedom Song". Her 1986 novel Coming to Birth won the Sinclair Prize and has been used as a -
Paul B. Vitta
Paul Vitta was born in Tanzania. He received his PhD in physics from Emory University and was a professor of physics at the University of Dar es Salaam. Later he worked for the African Regional Center for Technology in Senegal. Then he moved to the International Development Research Center in Canada. Before he retired, he was Director of UNESCO's Regional Office for Science and Technology in Africa.
Buy books on Amazon -
Sarah Ladipo Manyika
Sarah Ladipo Manyika was raised in Nigeria and has lived in Kenya, France, and England. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and for several years taught literature at San Francisco State University. Sarah currently serves on the boards of Hedgebrook and the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco. Sarah is a Patron of the Etisalat Prize for Literature and host to OZY’s video series “Write.” Her second novel Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun was shortlisted for the 2016 Goldsmiths Prize.
Buy books on Amazon -
Novuyo Rosa Tshuma
Novuyo Rosa Tshuma (born 28 January 1988) is a Zimbabwean writer. She is best known for her 2013 debut collection titled Shadows, a novella and short story book.
Buy books on Amazon
Tshuma was born and grew up in Bulawayo, a major city in Zimbabwe. She completed her high-school education at Girls' College, Bulawayo; where she studied Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and French for her A Levels. She is an alumna of the University of Witwatersrand, where she studied Economics and Finance. In 2009, her short story You in Paradise won the Intwasa Short Story Competition (now Yvonne Vera Award) for short fiction before she shot to recognition in 2013 following the release of her collection Shadows, which was published by Kwela Books. Shadows was nominated at the 2014 -
Julie Iromuanya
Julie Iromuanya is a writer, scholar, and educator. Born and raised in the American Midwest, she is the daughter of Igbo Nigerian immigrants. Her creative writing has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Passages North, the Cream City Review, and the Tampa Review, among other journals. Her scholarly-critical work most recently appears in Converging Identities: Blackness in the Modern Diaspora (Carolina Academic Press).
Buy books on Amazon
She has been shortlisted for several prizes, including the Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest, the Glimmer Train Very Short Fiction and Family Matters contests, the Rona Jaffe Foundation fellowship, and the Miles Morland Writing Scholarship.
Iromuanya earned her B.A. at the University of Central Florida, and her M.A. and Ph.D. at th -
Waheeda Joosab
Durban-based author, educator and wellness counsellor, Waheeda Joosab is a mother of two who holds a BA Hons degree in Psychology. She is founder of Educator Wellness SA, an enterprise that focuses on the wellbeing of teachers. Waheeda also sustains an award-winning blog called What Waydi Says, where she focuses on positivity and spirituality. Kismet - for roses to blossom... is her first book.
Buy books on Amazon -
Zaynab Alkali
Her Islamic family came from a village in Borno State, Nigeria, but moved to a Christian village in Gongola State, where she was brought up. She graduated from Bayero University, Kano, with a BA in 1973, obtaining an MA in African Literature in English in 1979. The first woman novelist from Northern Nigeria, she is Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Maiduguri, Borno State.
Buy books on Amazon
(from Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby) -
Kiru Taye
As a lover of romance novels, Kiru wanted to read stories about Africans falling in love. When she couldn’t find those books, she decided to write the stories she wanted to read.
Buy books on Amazon
Kiru writes sensual stories featuring African characters whether on the continent or in the Diaspora. When she's not writing you can find her either immersed in a good book or catching up with friends and family. She currently lives in the South of England with her husband and three children.
Kiru is a founding member of Romance Writers of West Africa. In 2011, her debut romance novella, His Treasure, won the Book of the Year at the Love Romances Café Awards. She is the 2015 Romance Writer of the Year at the Nigerian Writers Awards and 2017 Author of the Year at the -
Rebeka Njau
Rebeka Njau (born 1932) is a Kenyan educator, writer and textile artist.
Buy books on Amazon
She was born in Kanyariri in the Kiambu district, attended high school in Nairobi and studied education at Makerere University College in Uganda. She was a founder of Nairobi Girls Secondary School and served as headmistress from 1965 to 1966. Her one act play The Scar (1965), which condemns female genital mutilation, was first published in the journal Transition in 1963 and is considered to be the first play written by a Kenyan woman. Her play In the Round was performed in 1964 and was banned by the Ugandan government.
Her first novel Alone with the Fig Tree was rewritten as Ripples in the Pool (1975), which was awarded the East Africa Writing Committee Prize. Njau also -
Okwiri Oduor
Okwiri Oduor (born 1988/1989) is a Kenyan writer, who won the 2014 Caine Prize with her short story "My Father's Head". In April 2014 she was named on the Hay Festival's Africa39 list of 39 Sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define trends in African literature, with her story "Rag Doll" being included in the subsequent anthology edited by Ellah Allfrey, Africa39: New Writing from Africa South of the Sahara.
Buy books on Amazon -
Yewande Omotoso
YEWANDE OMOTOSO was born in Barbados and grew up in Nigeria, moving to South Africa with her family in 1992. Trained as an Architect she is the author of Bom Boy (Modjaji Books, 2011) which won the South African Literary Award for First-Time Published Author and was shortlisted for the South African Sunday Times Fiction Prize. In 2013 she was a finalist in the the inaugural, pan-African Etisalat Fiction Prize. Her second novel The Woman Next Door (Chatto and Windus, 2016) was longlisted for the Bailey's Women Prize and shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award. An Unusual Grief (Cassava Republic, 2022) is Omotoso's third novel. Omotoso works as a Storytelling Advisor with Greenpeace International and lives in Johannesburg.
Buy books on Amazon -
J. Nozipo Maraire
J. Nozipo Maraire (born in 1966) is a Zimbabwean doctor and writer. She is the author of Zenzele: A Letter for My Daughter. She is a practicing neurosurgeon in Klamath Falls, Oregon. She got her undergraduate degree from Harvard University and then attended The Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City. Soon after she entered a neurosurgery internship at Yale. She currently lives in New Haven, Connecticut.
Buy books on Amazon -
Femi Osofisan
Femi Osofisan studied in Ibadan, Dakar and Paris and taught theatre and comparative literature at the University of Ibadan for 34 years, a post from which he recently retired.
Buy books on Amazon
Osofisan’s professional experience is manifold—he is an award-winning poet, writer, actor, company director, journalist and scholar. But it is as playwright that he established his reputation, having written and produced over fifty plays, roughly half of which have been published.
Among these are a series of plays which speak of Osofisan’s long-standing interest in reinterpreting European works in the context of African—specifically, Yoruba—traditions and customs. He approaches his continuous search for a viable modern written theatre that would still be authentically A -
Peter Abrahams
Peter Abrahams was a South African-born Jamaican novelist, journalist and political commentator.
Buy books on Amazon
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. -
Eghosa Imasuen
Nigerian novelist, medical doctor, Warri boy, father and husband. Latest novel is Fine Boys.
Buy books on Amazon -
Miracle Emeka-Nkwor
Miracle Emeka-Nkwor was born and raised in the Garden city, Port Harcourt. She is a graduate of Biochemistry from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and has always likened herself to an overflowing drum of creativity. When she isn’t sketching designs, drafting patterns and bent over a sewing machine, her nose is buried in the pages of a good book.
Buy books on Amazon
What Happened to Janet Uzor is her debut novel.