Aiwanose Odafen

Aiwanose Odafen is a Nigerian feminist writer. She was born in Lagos, Nigeria. Her first novel, Tomorrow I Become a Woman, was published in 2022 and her second novel, We Were Girls Once, in 2024. She attended Nigerian Turkish International Colleges, graduating in 2009. As a high school student, she won gold and silver medals in the Nigerian National Mathematics Olympiad Competition. In 2013, she graduated from Covenant University with a first-class degree in Accounting, earning the distinction of Best Graduating Student in the Department of Accounting, School of Business and College of Development Student.

Career
Odafen is a certified accountant with the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, United Kingdom. In 2015, she earned an MBA from the University of Oxford. Following her graduation, she worked as a consultant in various industries. Odafen is expected to receive her MFA in Creative Writing from the Iowa Writers Workshop in 2024. As a writer, she has contributed to published non-fiction works and participated in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus Trust Writing Workshop. Her short story Faces was long listed for the 2020 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.

In 2020, her debut novel Tomorrow I Become a Woman was acquired by Scribner UK, a subsidiary of Simon & Schuster UK, in a three-book deal. The novel was published in 2022 and received recognition across Nigeria and the continent. It was listed as one of Brittle Paper 100 Notable African Books of 2022, OpenCountry Magazine 60 Notable Books of 2022 and Afrocritik's Top 25 African Novels of 2022. It has been the subject of academic papers and has been taught in schools including the Otto-Hahn-Gymnasium Bensberg in Germany.

In 2022, Odafen contributed to I Am Adona, a collection of stories by African women about their country's achievements in advancing women's rights and empowerment. The collection includes writings from a variety of women who are pioneers in their field, including 2020 recipient of the BBC World News Komla Dumor Award, Victoria Rubadiri; Botswana's first TED fellow and LGBT activist, Katlego K Kolanyane-Kesupile; and others.

Her second novel, We Were Girls Once, was published on 25 April 2024. It has been described by Isele Magazine as "sharp, unadorned, and unforgiving" with Ukamaka Olisakwe stating that it "takes the deft mind of an attentive writer to stir this kind of somber reflection".