Tomi Adeyemi Popular Books

Tomi Adeyemi Biography & Facts

Tomi Adeyemi (born August 1, 1993) is a Nigerian-American writer and creative writing coach. She is best known for her novel Children of Blood and Bone, the first in the Legacy of Orïsha trilogy published by Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, which won 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, she 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. Early life Tomi Adeyemi was born on August 1, 1993 in the United States to parents who emigrated from Nigeria. Her father was a physician in Nigeria but found employment as a taxi driver while he waited to transfer his qualifications. Adeyemi's mother worked as a cleaning woman. Adeyemi grew up in Chicago and was not exposed to her Nigerian heritage; her parents decided not to teach her or her siblings their native tongue. She would later embrace her heritage as an adult, explaining, "I didn't think too much of it and I think that is the kind of an experience of the first generation. You're just trying to fit in. You don't realize how cool your culture is until you get out of that phase of trying to fit in." She would later describe one of her novels as a love letter to her culture. She is ethnic Yoruba.Adeyemi wrote her first story when she was five years old, and continued to write throughout her teenage years. She graduated from Hinsdale Central High School in Hinsdale, Illinois in 2011. Adeyemi was qualified into the Hinsdale Central High School Foundation's Young Scholar Program in 2008 and went on to win their "Young Scholars" scholarship in 2010–2011. During her senior year, Adeyemi also received the Rani Sharma scholarship. She went on to graduate from Harvard University with an honors degree in English Literature, then studied West African mythology and culture in Salvador, Brazil, on a fellowship. It was this experience that inspired her to write Children of Blood and Bone, the breakthrough novel that would launch her career. Career After Tomi Adeyemi moved to California, she worked at a Los Angeles film production company. When she decided to reduce her hours there to write a book, her parents, who had uprooted their lives in Nigeria to give her a better life, were not entirely accepting of this idea. Adeyemi says, "I'm first-generation Nigerian so I came out of my mother's womb and I was supposed to be a doctor, a lawyer or engineer, and I was like 'oh hey, I'm quitting my very well-paying job at a very stable company that has many future job opportunities for me' ... I'm so lucky that my parents were like, 'obviously we're not crazy about this but we love you'."Adeyemi's first written novel did not yield positive feedback. She instead set herself a year to write another book that became Children of Blood and Bone, and she entered it into Pitch Wars, a competition program in which emerging writers are matched with editors and authors to revise their work before they submit it to a literary agent. Legacy of Orïsha trilogy Adeyemi's debut novel, Children of Blood and Bone, was released in March 2018, and debuted at number 1 on The New York Times Young Adult Hardcover Bestseller List. It is a young-adult (YA) fantasy novel, featuring protagonist Zélie Adebola, who fights 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." Children of Blood and Bone was awarded the 2018 Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy and is a finalist for the 2019 Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book. In late March 2017, Fox 2000 Pictures 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."In November 2018, Adeyemi accused Nora Roberts of plagiarizing the title of her novel, Of Blood and Bone from Children of Blood and Bone. Adeyemi later retracted the accusation saying "after talking to her, I believe our titles were created in isolation". Roberts later clarified that her book had been titled and submitted to her publisher one year before Adeyemi's. She also criticised Adeyemi's lack of fact checking and the fact that Adeyemi had not deleted the accusation a day later.For reasons unclear, her second novel, Children of Virtue and Vengeance was pushed back from its initial release date of March 2019 to June 2019. Adeyemi later stated on her Instagram that her publisher offered her two choices: June 2019 and December 2019, but she chose the former so fans would not have to wait. The workload was too much and the author, editor, and publisher agreed to give the second book more time. Children of Virtue and Vengeance became a #1 New York Times Bestseller in December 2019.In December 2020, Fox's new parent company Disney announced that its two subsidiaries Lucasfilm and 20th Century Studios would be adapting Children of Blood and Bone into a movie. By 2021, Adeyemi had become frustrated with the pace of Lucasfilm's film adaptation process. She asked to serve as scriptwriter, a request that Lucasfilm had declined. Since Lucasfilm had wanted to focus on its own intellectual properties Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Willow, the company and 20th Century Studios had allowed its film rights to Children of Blood and Bone to lapse in late 2021. In mid–January 2022, Paramount Pictures acquired the rights for a guaranteed exclusive theatrical release, with Temple Hill Entertainment producing alongside Sunswept Entertainment. As part of the agreement, Adeyemi will write the script and also serve as executive producer. In mid–December 2023, it was announced that Gina Prince-Bythewood would direct the Paramount Pictures adaptation with Wyck Godfrey, Marty Bowen, Karen Rosenfelt, and Matt Jackson as executive producers. Other activities While working on her debut novel Children of Blood and Bone, Adeyemi worked as a creative writing coach. In addition to her success as a novelist, Adeyemi teaches creative writing through her online course, The Writer's Roadmap. Her website has been named one of the 101 best websites for writers by Writer’s Digest.Adeyemi made a guest appearance in the final episode of Hermione Granger and the Quarter Life Crisis.Patrick Harpin and Everett Downing, Jr., creators of My Dad the Bounty Hunter, hired Adeyemi to work on the animated all-ages series, which had a majority-Black writers room. Personal life Tomi Adeyemi lives in New York City, New York. She is of Yoruba heritage. She has .... Discover the Tomi Adeyemi popular books. 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Best Seller Tomi Adeyemi Books of 2024

  • Wild Flower - Die Gesetzlose synopsis, comments

    Wild Flower - Die Gesetzlose

    Charlotte Nicole Davis

    »Westworld« meets »Der Report der Magd«: ein umwerfendes Fantasyabenteuer mit starken farbigen Frauen in den Hauptrollen.Umgeben von einer unheimlichen Wildnis liegt der Ort Green ...

  • The Seed of Cain synopsis, comments

    The Seed of Cain

    Agnes Gomillion

    Return to the startlingly original dystopian world of The Record Keeper in this stunning sequel. For readers of Octavia Butler, Kim Stanley Robinson, Nnedi Okorafor and Tade Thomps...

  • The Beasts In The Arena synopsis, comments

    The Beasts In The Arena

    Sophia McDougall

    A gripping short story, set in the world of Romanitas, plus an extended extract of Romanitas, chronicling the fortunes of the Roman Empire in a paralellel modern world . . . The Ro...

  • The Deep synopsis, comments

    The Deep

    Rivers Solomon

    Octavia E. Butler meets Marvel’s Black Panther in The Deep, a story rich with Afrofuturism, folklore, and the power of memory, inspired by the Hugo Award–nominated song “The Deep” ...

  • Im Zeichen der Mohnblume - Die Kaiserin synopsis, comments

    Im Zeichen der Mohnblume - Die Kaiserin

    R.F. Kuang

    Die TikTokSensation aus den USA! Der 2. Band der epischen FantasySaga in einer Welt voller Kampfkunst, Götter und uralter Magie.Rin ist auf der Flucht. Noch immer verfolgen sie die...

  • King of Dead Things synopsis, comments

    King of Dead Things

    Nevin Holness

    For fans of Legendborn, Neil Gaiman, and Leigh Bardugo, this urban young adult fantasy steeped in AfroCarribbean folklore follows two Black teens searching for a powerful artifact ...

  • Liccle Bit synopsis, comments

    Liccle Bit

    Alex Wheatle

    What's worse than hiding a secret? Liccle Bit's about to find out...Venetia King is the hottest girl at school. Too bad Lemar is the second shortest guy in his year. Everyone calls...

  • Daughters of Oduma synopsis, comments

    Daughters of Oduma

    Moses Ose Utomi

    An elite female fighter must reenter the competition to protect her found family of younger sisters in this “absorbing, striking” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) young adult fa...

  • Empress of Flames synopsis, comments

    Empress of Flames

    Mimi Yu

    Princess Lu knows that the throne of the Empire of the First Flame rightfully belongs to her. After all, she is the late Emperor's firstborn and has trained for the role all her li...

  • Iron Widow - Seele in Ketten synopsis, comments

    Iron Widow - Seele in Ketten

    Xiran Jay Zhao

    Sie beherrscht das Reich, doch ihre Seele liegt in Ketten …Zetian hat ihr Ziel erreicht und ist die erste Herrscherin des Reiches. Endlich kann sie die Gesellschaft, die Frauen so ...

  • Romanitas synopsis, comments

    Romanitas

    Sophia McDougall

    In a parallel modern world, the Roman Empire stretches from India in the East to the Great Wall of Terranova in the West. A runaway slave girl with a strange gift sets out to rescu...

  • The Record Keeper synopsis, comments

    The Record Keeper

    Agnes Gomillion

    "The Record Keeper is empathy through fiction." Actor, Comedian and Film Producer Wayne Brady on The Record Keeper which he plans to bring to the Silver Screen.The Record Keeper&...

  • Iron Widow - Rache im Herzen synopsis, comments

    Iron Widow - Rache im Herzen

    Xiran Jay Zhao

    Diene den Männern, verheirate dich gewinnbringend und dann stirb! Der »NewYorkTimes«Platz1Bestseller des kanadischen TikTokStars.Die 18jährige Zetian tritt der Armee bei, um Rache ...

  • Savage City synopsis, comments

    Savage City

    Sophia McDougall

    An explosion rips through the Colosseum, and as the smoke clears the world is changed forever. A new Emperor, spurred on by a riddling prophecy and armed with a devastating superwe...

  • Storm of Locusts synopsis, comments

    Storm of Locusts

    Rebecca Roanhorse

    Kai and Caleb Goodacre have been kidnapped just as rumors of a cult sweeping across the reservation leads Maggie and Hastiin to investigate an outpost, and what they find there wil...

  • Crongton Knights synopsis, comments

    Crongton Knights

    Alex Wheatle

    Winner of the Guardian Children Fiction's Prize 2016Shortlisted for the YA Book Prize 2017Living on the South Crongton council estate has its worries and life for McKay has been e...

  • Rome Burning synopsis, comments

    Rome Burning

    Sophia McDougall

    In a parallel modern world, Rome and Japan stand on the brink of world war. When the Emperor falls ill, his young nephew Marcus Novius Caesar finds himself taking command of the gr...