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 starting my blog writing opinion essays, short stories and book reviews.
In 2015, I was one of twenty-five selected for the Farafina Trust Creative Writing Workshop hosted by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Since then, I have mostly written fiction and creative non-fiction.
My fiction was first longlisted for the Writivism Prize in 2017 and later shortlisted in 2019, where I got the chance to develop my story under the mentorship of an already established author and poet.
I won second place in the inaugural Mo Siewcharran Prize in 2019, winning my first major prize money on the strength of my unfinished manuscript and I have been a finalist for the prestigious Miles Morland Scholarship Prize twice, first in 2020 and later in 2023.
Other longlists include, the Royal Society of Literature V.S. Pritchett Prize in 2020, the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2022, and the Guardian/4th Estate Prize in 2025. My breakout memoir essay The Smell of Oxford was also a finalist for the Brittle Paper Creative Nonfiction Prize in 2019. My work has appeared in Tender Photos, Catapult Magazine, Isele Magazine, Archivi.ng, and in several other journals.
In 2023, I founded The Oluwanifise Foundation, a social impact organisation working to close the literacy and nutrition gap in underserved communities across Nigeria. With a committed team of staff and volunteers, we run a weekly reading club for over 200 children across primary schools in the Ibadan Northwest LGA and Uke in Nasarawa State. We have reached more than a thousand children in our annual school drive, and are preparing to expand into other cities later this year. Our nutrition project in collaboration with doctors and nutritionists in the University College Hospital Ibadan is underway, in support of severely malnourished children under age five. I often write about the tenderness and weight of being human. The Foundation is where I try to live it.
Beyond writing and chairing a foundation, I am an avid and passionate reader. For the past ten years, I have built a community online around books — hosting events, discussing, reviewing, and championing literature, both from the African continent and the diaspora. I have lived in seven cities across Africa and Europe and understand the peculiarities of writing both from home and the diaspora and what draws readers to a conversation.
I love art and I enjoy coffee shop chatter, a sensory resource that has fueled some of my writing over the years.
My first fiction book, a collection of short stories will be out from Masobe Books in November 2026
I am online on X , Instagram and topeowolabi.com
