There is Goodness Waiting at Home
Excited to share that my short story collection is coming out soon.
A moving collection about longing, faith, family, migration, and the quiet courage required to begin again. Tender, sharp, and deeply humane, these stories illuminate the ways people break, endure, and find their way back to one another.
Out 19th November 2026
“In this impressive debut, Owolabi weaves moments of triumph and sorrow into a sharply observed collection that embraces the peculiar wonders and fragilities of being human today.”
—Ayobami Adebayo, author of A Spell of Good Things
“Owolabi writes beautifully about grief, loss, and mourning. Her prose is evocative, her observations are sharp, and her characters are deeply human. Death is everywhere in this collection, yet the stories escape bleakness. There is always goodness waiting.”
—Chika Unigwe, author of Grace
About the Book
A charismatic pastor’s wife builds an empire on faith and image while struggling to hold together the truths beneath the surface. A widower sits in a library years after his wife’s death, writing a letter that might finally answer his daughter’s questions about love, grief, and belonging. A young Nigerian woman arrives in Britain hoping for a fresh start, only to discover that migration cannot erase the weight of family expectations. A woman mourning a devastating loss learns that hope and heartbreak can occupy the same space. And another embarks on an affair that leaves her grieving a man she was never allowed to publicly claim.
Spanning Lagos, Ibadan, Osogbo, London and Cambridge, There Is Goodness Waiting at Home is a moving collection about longing, faith, family, migration, and the quiet courage required to begin again.
Tender, sharp, and deeply humane, these stories illuminate the ways people break, endure, and find their way back to one another.
About Me
My writing explores the tenderness and possibilities of love, together with the hopelessness of loss and its weight on the human experience. I began writing in 2012, first as a newspaper columnist before focusing on fiction and memoir essays. My fiction manuscript won second place in the inaugural Mo Siewcharran Prize and I was a finalist for the Miles Morland Prize twice in 2020 and 2022.
I have two manuscripts in progress, one of which won second place in the inaugural Mo Siewcharran Prize 2019 and a second which has received high commendation from the Women’s Prize for Fiction Discoveries programme and the Curtis Brown Creative.
My writing has been longlisted for the Commonwealth Prize, Guardian/4th Estate Prize, V.S. Pritchett Prize, and the Writivism Prize. My nonfiction was also a finalist for the Brittle Paper Creative Nonfiction Prize. I have received support from programmes such as the Farafina Creative Writing Workshop, and my work has appeared in Tender Photos, Catapult Magazine, Isele Magazine, Archivi.ng, and in newspapers as a columnist.
My debut collection of short stories There is Goodness Waiting at Home is forthcoming in November 2026.
