Oyinkan Braithwaite

Oyinkan Braithwaite (born 1988) is a Nigerian-UK novelist and writer. Braithwaite was born in Lagos in 1988. She spent most of her childhood in the UK after her family moved to Southgate in north London. She had her primary school education in London then returned to Lagos when her brother was born in 2001. She studied law and creative writing at Surrey University and Kingston University before moving back to Lagos in 2012.

Quotes

 * Writing for me is an act of discovery, I am learning about the characters even as I am writing them. In reality, we rarely know why people do the things they do. I think it is enough, sometimes, to simply point to something and allow the readers to reach their own conclusions.
 * On the intentions for her novel My Sister, The Serial Killer in “Stuck with Them: An Interview with Oyinkan Braithwaite” in Los Angeles Review of Books (2019 Jan 11)


 * As an individual I’m attracted to strong female characters – my characters have always been people who own themselves. Even if they’re strongly doing something wrong, they’ve always been powerful people.
 * On her character preferences in “Oyinkan Braithwaite’s serial-killer thriller: would you help your murderer sister?” in The Guardian (2019 Jan 15)


 * We have a wide divide between classes and we have a wide divide between cultures because we’re from different tribes, we have different religions. You don’t have to walk very far to see someone who has a really different life from you...I wouldn’t want to write a novel and people feel that I’m speaking to a Nigerian experience – I’m speaking to my experience, to the things I’m interested in, and that’s all I can do.
 * On how varied the Nigerian experience is in “Oyinkan Braithwaite’s serial-killer thriller: would you help your murderer sister?” in The Guardian (2019 Jan 15)


 * Here in Nigeria, being the first born is a huge, huge role. It's a huge responsibility. It's a big deal. You're treated - from the get-go, you're treated differently. You know, there's a kind of proverb here. I'm not sure what language it's in, but where they say, the eldest child is the one that opened the womb.
 * On the cultural beliefs surrounding the eldest child in “Author Interview: 'My Sister, The Serial Killer'” in NPR (2018 Nov 17)