Helen Oyeyemi was born in Ibadan Nigeria in 1984 and has lived in London from the age of four. She completed The Icarus Girl just before her nineteenth birthday, while studying for her A-levels. 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.

She is the author of six novels, including White is for Witching, which won a 2010 Somerset Maugham Award, and Mr Fox, which won a 2012 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award.

In 2013, she was named one of Granta's Best Young British Novelists.

Professional awards and recognition

Her novel White Is for Witching was a 2009 Shirley Jackson Award finalis 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.

Novels

The Icarus Girl (2005)

The Opposite House (2007)

White Is for Witching (2009, French translation as Le Blanc va aux sorcières, 2011)

Mr. Fox (2011)

Boy, Snow, Bird (2014)

Gingerbread

Plays

Juniper's Whitening (2004)

Victimese (2005)

Short story collections

What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours (2016)