YEJIDE KILANKO was born in Ibadan, Nigeria, and lives in Ontario, Canada, where she practices as a social worker. Kilanko’s debut novel, DAUGHTERS WHO WALK THIS PATH, is a Canadian national bestseller. The novel was longlisted for the 2016 Nigeria Literature Prize. Kilanko’s work includes a novella, CHASING BUTTERFLIES (2015), and two children’s picture books, THERE IS AN ELEPHANT IN MY WARDROBE (2019) and JUBA AND THE FIREBALL (2020). You can find Kilanko’s short fiction on Brittle Paper, Joyland, NEW ORLEANS REVIEW Issue 43, 2017: The African Literary Hustle, and Agbowó. Her latest novel, A GOOD NAME, is out now. When she’s not busy with life, you’ll find Kilanko online playing simultaneous games of Scrabble.

While never losing sight of her characters' radiant humanity, Kilanko writes about the consequential weight of cultural expectations with a beauty and insight that is both profound and universal.

With a steady and skillful hand, Yejide Kilanko has built an achingly human narrative that interrogates the ways men and women are bound by tradition, culture, family, and each other. Much like Buchi Emecheta's classic The Joys of Motherhood, Kilanko offers an unsparing depiction of disappointments, large and small, and the very human choices that compound or alleviate them. At each turn, Kilanko invites us to ask ourselves how we might respond in similar circumstances. Much like Tayari Jones' much-lauded Silver Sparrow and An American Marriage, the characters and their conundrums haunt you when the story ends. You leave unsettled by the injustice of unfairness, deeply wishing the characters had chosen another way.