Ayotola Tehingbola
LL.B., Law | Obafemi Awolowo University 2015
B.L. (Qualifying Certificate) | Nigerian Law School Lagos 2016
M.F.A., Creative Writing | Boise State University 2024
Ph.D., English and Creative Writing with WGST minor | University of Missouri, Columbia (in progress)
Areas of Study:
- Creative Writing
- Literary Translation
- (Post)Apocalyptic Anthropology
- Women and Gender Studies
- The Yorùbá Empire
- History of the Portuguese and British in today’s Nigeria
- Corpus Linguistics
Ayotola Tehingbola (she/her, b. ’93) is a lawyer and artist from Lagos, Nigeria. She has an MFA from Boise State University and is currently a PhD candidate in English at the University of Missouri, Columbia.
Her debut story collection, Lagos Will Be Hard For You, was shortlisted for the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, and is published by Masobe Books (West Africa, 2025) and Jacaranda Books (UK/Commonwealth, 2026). Her novel, The Last Electric Man in the World, is set to be published in 2027.
Her work has appeared in The Common, CRAFT, Witness Magazine, Washington Square Review, etc., has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Anthology, and was selected for the 2025 Best Small Fictions anthology. She has been supported by the Hudson Valley Writers Center, the Alexa Rose Foundation, the Idaho Commission on the Arts, Kimbilio for Black Fiction, and the Key West Literary Seminar.
You can find her at ayotola.com.
- Kimbilio Summer Retreat Fellow, July 2024.
- 2024 Presidential Scholar Award in Performance and Visual Arts (Boise State University's Graduate College).
- 2024 Outstanding International Student Award (Boise State University's Center for Global Engagement).
- 2024 Glenn Bach Award for Fiction (Boise State University's Creative Writing Department).
- Finalist for Graywolf Press 2023 African Fiction Prize for Debut Novel.
- 2023 Glenn Bach Award for Fiction (Boise State University's Creative Writing Department).
- 2022 Glenn Bach Award for Fiction (Boise State University's Creative Writing Department).
- Pushcart Prize / Nomination from Quarterly West, 2022.
- Best Small Fictions / Nomination from Quarterly West, 2022.
- Best of the Net Anthology Shortlist / Nomination from pidgeonholes, 2022.
- Karen Finley Scholarship for Women and Nonbinary Writers, Hudson Valley Writers Center, Winter 2022.
- because if something no right, you no suppose sit down and look - CRAFT, 2024.
- Sister, Sister - Split Lip Magazine, 2024.
- The Water Is Not The Faucet - Witness Magazine, 2023.
- H - Passages North, 2023.
- A Cord Around The World - Quarterly West, 2022.
- We Should Have Told Mother This - pidgeonholes, 2022.