Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀

Born in Lagos, Nigeria, Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀’s stories have appeared in several magazines and anthologies, and one was highly commended in the 2009 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. She holds BA and MA degrees in Literature in English from Obafemi Awolowo University. She also has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia where she was awarded an international bursary for creative writing.

In 2017, Adébáyọ̀ debut novel Stay With Me was shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. In Nigerian society a childless woman is a tragedy, and considered to have probably brought it on herself. Hoping for a child, to please her husband and her mother-in-law, Yejide has exhausted her options but after her husband accepts a new wife into the family, Yejide finally begins to bear fruit with tragic consequences.

One of Amazon’s top 100 books of 2017, unravelling against the social and political turbulence of 1980s Nigeria, Stay With Me is a story of the fragility of married love, the undoing of family, the power of grief and the all-consuming bonds of motherhood.