Biography of Tomi Adeyemi

Tomi Champion-Adeyemi is an award-winning Nigerian-American author and creative writing coach. Born in 1993, Adeyemi grew up in Chicago to Yoruban parents who immigrated to the United States from Nigeria. Adeyemi's father, a physician in Nigeria, had to find work as a taxi driver after immigrating, and her mother worked as a cleaner. Adeyemi began writing at age five. Though she loved fantasy, she rarely saw black women represented in the genre.

She graduated from Hinsdale Central High School in Hinsdale, Illinois in 2011. Adeyemi qualified for the Hinsdale Central High School Foundation's Young Scholar Program in 2008 and then won the program's "Young Scholars" scholarship in 2010. During her final year of high school, Adeyemi earned the Rani Sharma scholarship. She went on to graduate from Harvard University with an honors degree in English literature. After completing her undergraduate degree, she studied West African mythology and culture in Salvador, Brazil, on a fellowship. This trip provided the inspiration for Children of Blood and Bone.

In California, Adeyemi held a well-paying job at a film production company but reduced her hours to write her books, a decision her parents initially objected to. Adeyemi's first novel was not well received, so she entered the manuscript for what would become Children of Blood and Bone into Pitch Wars. In this competition, emerging writers work with editors and authors to revise their work before pitching it to agents.

Adeyemi considers Children of Blood and Bone a love letter to her Nigerian heritage. In an interview, Adeyemi explains that she was distanced from her heritage growing up, as she tried to fit in with her peers, and her parents chose not to teach their children Yoruba so they could use the language to communicate privately in front of their children.

While writing her book, Adeyemi was conscious of the Black Lives Matter Movement; she views the fantasy setting as a lens through which to see modern racial discrimination and social injustice. She described the moment where her interests and experiences convalesced into writing Children of Blood and Bone as a "spiritual moment." In interviews, Adeyemi discusses how writing helped her connect with her deceased grandparents and Yoruban spirituality.

Children of Blood and Bone was released in March 2018. In late March 2017, prior to the novel's commercial release, Fox 2000 Pictures purchased the film adaptation rights. Adeyemi's debut novel not only reached number one on the New York Times Young Adult Hardcover Bestseller List, but then went on to win the 2018 Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy, the 2019 Waterstones Book Prize, and the 2019 Hugo Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book.

In 2019, Adeyemi was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list; in 2020, she was named to the TIME 100 Most Influential People of 2020 in the "Pioneers" category. She will serve as a scriptwriter and executive producer for the Children of Blood and Bone adaptation with Paramount pictures. Adeyemi also works as a creative writing coach and teaches creative writing online.