Lola Shoneyin

Lola Shoneyin is a Nigerian author, poet, publisher, bookseller, festival organiser and cultural activist.  Her works includes three books of poems: So All the Time I Was Sitting on an Egg (1997), Song of a Riverbird (2002) and For the Love of Flight (2010) and seven children’s books. Her debut novel, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives was nominated for the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2011 and went on to win the PEN Oakland 2011 Josephine Miles Literary Award and the Ken Saro Wiwa Prose Prize. 

Shoneyin is the founder of Book Buzz Foundation—an NGO devoted to promoting literacy, creating reading spaces, and organising cultural events such as the Ake Arts & Book Festival and the Kaduna Book & Arts Festival. In 2017, Shoneyin founded Ouida Books to support and promote creative writing on the African continent. 

In 2023, Shoneyin won the inaugural Aficionado Award which was presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair. She was also featured on the Financial Times list of the most influential women of 2023.