About
Irenosen Okojie was born in Nigeria and moved to England aged eight. She attended Gresham’s Boarding School in Holt, Norfolk for several years before becoming a pupil at St Angela's Convent School in east London.
In her early teens, she was a student at Stamford Boarding School for girls in Stamford, Lincolnshire for a brief period then returned to London to finish her secondary education. She studied Communications and Visual Culture at London Metropolitan University.
Along the way, she worked as a freelance writer, marketing assistant and editorial Assistant. She is a freelance Arts Project Manager and curator.
She was the National Development Coordinator at Apples & Snakes, England’s leading performance poetry organisation and a Publicity Officer for The Caine Prize For Fiction tour.
“A liberatingly odd, seductive and fearless talent.”
She worked with The Southbank Centre on their live children’s show Peter & the Wolf and has programmed for Duckie for their series of interactive nights.
Irenosen was a selected writer for the Flight mentorship scheme for young writers run by Spread the Word.
Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Observer, The Guardian, the BBC and the Huffington Post amongst other publications. Her short stories have been published internationally.
She was presented at The London Short Story Festival by Ben Okri as a dynamic writing talent to watch then featured in the Evening Standard Magazine as one of London’s exciting new authors.
Her debut novel, Butterfly Fish, published by Jacaranda Books won a Betty Trask Award. It was shortlisted for the Edinburgh First Book Award. Her short story collection, Speak Gigantular was shortlisted for the Edgehill Short Story Prize, the Jhalak Prize, the Saboteur Awards and nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award. It was selected by film director Carol Morley as an Observer Summer Read.
Irenosen has been a judge for The Society of Authors, The London Short Story Prize, The Royal Society Of Literature, the Berlin Writing Prize, Henley Literary Festival and Mslexia Short Story Competition. She was a judge for the 2020 BBC National Short Story Award, the 2021 Gordon Burn Prize, the 2022 Women’s Prize Discoveries development programme, the International Dylan Thomas Prize, The British Book Awards and the Dublin Literary Award. She has moderated panels for Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments tour, the Southbank Centre, Africa Writes, English PEN, Birmingham Literature Festival, Writing on The Wall Festival in conversation with Marlon James, An Evening With Fran Lebowitz, star of Netflix’s Pretend It’s A City directed by Martin Scorsese and others. She was the first Writer in Residence for Words of Colour. She has been featured in anthologies by Penguin, Virago Press and more and has written introductions for Faber and Serpent’s Tail.
Curatorial projects include Black Joy for the BBC, Maverick Women and The Moon featuring Margaret Atwood and The Moon As Muse film talks and screenings for Moon Festival. Her next book, Nudibranch was signed by Little Brown’s Dialogue Books. Nudibranch was featured in Vanity Fair magazine. It was championed by Margaret Atwood as a wild, recommended read and selected as one of the best books of the year in the Guardian and Observer Review by Bernardine Evaristo and Diana Evans. It was longlisted for the Jhalak Prize. Her story, Synsepalum was recorded by actress Niki Amuka-Bird ( Luther, Avenue 5, Old, The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency) for the BBC. Her theatre film piece, Gunk featuring Sarah Niles( Ted Lasso, I May Destroy You, Rocks, Catastrophe) was directed by Akinola Davies Jr ( Sundance winner and Bafta nominated). Irenosen is the winner of the 2020 AKO Caine Prize for her story, Grace Jones. A fellow and Vice Chair of The Royal Society of Literature and a Contributing Editor at The White Review. She was the co-presenter of the BBC’s Novels That Shaped Our World podcast, Turn Up For The Books alongside Simon Savidge and Bastille frontman, Dan Smith, a follow up to the TV series. She was a judge for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2023. Her novel Curandera is forthcoming from Dialogue Books in 2024 and Soft Skull Press in the US in 2025. In 2021 she was awarded an MBE For Services to Literature. In 2023 she was named a visionary artist in Red Magazine’s The Next 25 visionaries to watch, nominated by Booker Prize winning author Bernardine Evaristo. The list featured nominations from Michelle Obama, Sharon Horgan, Skin and more. Irenosen is the director and founder of Black To The Future, a multidisciplinary Afrofuturist festival.
