Helen Oyeyemi

Brenda Cooper (University of Cape Town); Revised By: Leila Kamali (Independent Scholar - Europe)

Ed. by Jenni Ramone, The Nottingham Trent University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Gina Lyle (University of York), Graham MacPhee (University of Manchester), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

Born 10 Dec 1984
Activity 2005-ongoing

Places

Born in Nigeria
Active in United Kingdom

Activities

Primary

Children's/Young Adult writer
Novelist

Resources

Oyeyemi's Works

Save to Bookshelf

Helen Oyeyemi was born in Nigeria in 1984 and migrated to England with her parents at the age of four. She grew up in Lewisham, south London, wrote her first novel

The Icarus Girl

(2005) while in sixth form at Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School in Holland Park, and had it published at the age of 20 while an undergraduate at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Oyeyemi has since published a volume of two plays, “Victimese” and “Juniper’s Whitening” (2006), and six further novels, including

The Opposite House

(2007),

White is for Witching

(2009),

Mr Fox

(2011),

Boy, Snow, Bird

(2014),

Gingerbread

(2019), and

Peaces

(2021). The short-story collection

What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

appeared in 2016. Oyeyemi’s work, broadly speaking, explores phenomena of cultural and gendered…

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Citation: Cooper, Brenda, Leila Kamali. "Helen Oyeyemi". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 October 2008; last revised 16 November 2023. [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5883, accessed 21 November 2024.]