Quick Facts
Biography
Tomi Adeyemi is a 23 year old Nigerian-American writer and creative writing coach. She is known for her book Children of Blood and Bone; which is the first in a trilogy to be published by Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group.
Education and Career
She recently graduated from Harvard with an honors degree in English Literature then studied West African mythology and culture in Salvador, Brazil on a fellowship. She now lives in San Diego.
Adeyemi has also written a book which will be released in 2018 called Children of Blood and Bone; which is a Black Lives Matter-inspired, young-adult (YA) fantasy novel; it features protagonist Zélie Adebola who fight a monarchy to return magic to her people. Adeyemi has said she wanted to write a fantasy novel set in West Africa so that "a little Black girl [could] pick up my book one day and see herself as the star...I want her to know that she’s beautiful and she matters and she can have a crazy, magical adventure even if an ignorant part of the world tells her she can never be Hermione Granger."
Fox 2000 has purchased the film adaptation rights to the book. Reportedly the deals for the publishing and film rights were approximately seven figures: Deadline described it as "one of the biggest YA debut novel publishing deals ever."