Teju Cole: A brief biography

Teju Cole, born Obayemi Babajide Adetokunbo Onafuwa, is a Nigerian-American writer, photographer and critic. He was the photography critic of the New York Times Magazine from 2015 to 2019. He is currently the Gore Vidal Professor of the Practice of Creative Writing at Harvard.

Although born in the United States, he was raised in Nigeria. This unique twist is what informs most of his art. He later returned to the United States where he attended Western Michigan University. After dropping out of Medical school, he pursued a programme in art history, in which he has a doctorate. Like his photographs, his writing are vivid, conjuring sharp and clear images. His collection of essays “Known and Strange Things” was published to critical acclaim.

He has contributed to alot of magazines most notably the New York Times, the New Yorker and Granta.

Read also: Kadaria Ahmed: A brief biography

He has had solo photography exhibitions around the world in countries like Italy, India, Iceland and Germany.

Books

• Every Day Is for the Thief
• Open City
• Known and Strange Things
• City of Pain
• Black Paper
• Blind Spot, etc

Awards

• 2011 Time magazine’s “Best Books of the Year” for Open City
• 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award finalist for Open City
• PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay shortlist 
• 2018 Poynter Journalism Fellow at Yale University, etc

Teju Cole currently lives in Cambridge, MA.