Olumide Popoola

The Nigerian-German writer and literature disseminator Olumide Popoola (born 1975) is the daughter of a German mother and a Nigerian father and grew up in Germany and Nigeria. She has lived in London since 2002 and writes essays, poems, prose and plays. In 2004 she received the May Ayim Award for Black Literature in Germany in the category poetry. She has a PhD in Creative Writing and has taught the subject at various universities. In 2018 she curated the first African Book Festival – Writing in Migration in Berlin, featuring more than 35 writers. She developed and runs the Creative Writing format The Future is Back, which promotes young writers from the LGBTQ+ scene. Her novel When We Speak of Nothing was published in 2017in the UK, Nigeria, the USA, Denmark and France to great critical acclaim. In 2010-20 Olumide was Writer-in-Residence at the University of Greenwich, where she worked on a new novel.

Publications:
this is not about sadness. Novel. Unrast, 2010.
Also by Mail. Play. edition assemblage, 2013.
breach. short stories together with Annie Holmes, Peirene Press, 2016.
When We Speak of Nothing, Novel, Cassava Republic Press, 2017.
Links: The writer’s website: www.olumidepopoola.com Interview with Deutsche Welle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58s-hBmbLKk