Onyebuchi was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, United states.[6] His parents were Nigerian Igbo immigrants Elizabeth Ihuegbu and Nnamdi Onyebuchi, who was a restaurant manager.[6][7] His first name means "praise God" in Igbo.[8]
He says: "Growing up as the son of Nigerian immigrants, I always felt like I was in a position where I didn't completely identify as an African-American; I can trace my family eight generations back, but I'm not fully Nigerian, because I was born in America. I operate in that sort of in-between space."[9]
In high school, he studied abroad for a year in France, where he fell in love with Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo, and was inspired when he learned Dumas was of African ancestry.[10] Onyebuchi wrote extensively growing up and attempted to sell his first novel in high school.[6]
He attended Yale University, graduating with a degree in political science in 2009.[11] While there, he was a member of the fraternity of St. Anthony Hall.[12] During college, he spent a summer in Morocco learning Arabic.[13]
After law school, Onyebuchi was licensed with the New York Bar and began a career in civil rights law.[1][4] He worked in the Civil Rights Bureau of the New York State Attorney General's Office and was also an investigator for New York City's Legal Aid Society where he assisted prisoners from Rikers Island.[1][15] He said, "This brought me to the edge of burnout. I wanted to remain involved in those issues, but away from the constant grind. I realized I didn't have the stamina for it."[1]
He worked at a high-tech firm as a domain expert from 2017 to 2019, using his two-hour daily commute on the train as time to write.[1][4] In 2019, he left his job to devote his time to writing.[4]
Novels and stories
Onyebuchi began writing novels and submitting them to publishers when he was in high school.[6] When his first 16 novels were rejected, he decided to move on to a new project rather than to edit and resubmit.[4] Because of this process, he had written 17 novels in 15 years.[4] About a year after law school, he signed a contract to write two young adult novels.[9]
His first published novel, Beasts Made of Night (2017), was written for young adult readers and is set in a mythical dystopian world inspired by Nigerian folklore.[1][16][17]School Library Journal wrote: "Onyebuchi's world-building is strong, and the details leap off the page; readers will witness the poverty, smell the delicious food, and feel the physical pain of being a sin-eater."[16]Time wrote: "This balancing act of thrill and inquiry promises to make the 33-year-old Onyebuchi a power player in the YA world in the years to come."[17]Beast of Night won the 2018 Ilube Nommo Award for Best Speculative Fiction Novel by an African.[18] He published a sequel, Crown of Thunder, in 2018.[19]
He then wrote the War Girls young adult series, which includes War Girls in 2019 and Rebel Sisters in 2020.[20][21] The setting for War Girls is Nigeria of 2172, but using historical events such as the Biafran War.[22]School Library Journal wrote that War Girls was "A bleak but compulsively readable story with high action and high drama in equal measure".[22]
In 2020, he published Riot Baby, revolving around Kev, born during the 1992 Los Angeles riots and his sister who possesses telekinetic powers.[23] Onyebuchi drew on his experience as a lawyer in setting much of the novel at Rikers Island in New York, where Kev is wrongfully incarcerated.[15] His inspiration for the novel came from the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Trayvon Martin and the lack of indictments of the police officers who killed them.[15][3] He says, "I felt a rage born of impotence. At the same time, as a writer, I clung to this idea of writers as alchemists—that we can take pain and anger and rage and sorrow and turn it into a work of art that will alleviate this crippling sense of loneliness."[15]Riot Baby won the Alex Award for young adult fiction from the American Library Association, the Ignyte Award for best novella, and the World Fantasy Award for best novella.[24][25][3]Riot Baby was also a finalist for the 2021 Hugo Award for Best Novella.[26]
In 2022, Onyebuchi's first adult science fiction novel, Goliath, was published by Tor Books.[27][28] He started working on this novel before writing Beasts Made of Night.[4]Goliath is set in the year 2050 when the wealthy have moved to space colonies, leaving the poor behind in the crumbling remains of Earth.[28] Through his novel, Onyebuchi critiques income inequality, gentrification, and racism.[4]Publishers Weekly wrote that it was "urgent, gorgeous work".[29] It was selected as The New York Times Editors' Choice Pick and one of "5 Books Not to Miss" by USA Today,[12][28] and was a nominee for Best Science Fiction Novel in the 2022 Dragon Awards.
In his 2021 non-fiction work (S)kinfolk, Onyebuchi writes about the impact that reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel Americanah had on him, as the child of Nigerian immigrants who did not see a himself reflected in a novel until the age of 26. Publishers Weekly, characterizing (S)kinfolk as a "moving blend of criticism and memoir", observed: "Readers familiar with Americanah will appreciate the author’s insight, and those new to it will find Onyebuchi’s masterful integration of anecdote and criticism accessible. Full of fresh perspective, this is an eye-opener."[31]
Comics
Onyebuchi's first comic was a Domino story for the anthology Marvel's Voices: Legacy.[9] One reviewer noted, "Tochi Onyebuchi writes one of the most effective Domino stories ever..."[32]
In 2021, Marvel announced that Onyebuchi would be writing a new comics series titled Black Panther Legends, focused on the origin of the Black Panther, with illustrations by Setor Fiadzigbey.[9][33] A long-time fan of comics, Onyebuchi said his response to this project was: "'Is this real? Is this really happening?' ...I still can't totally process that I am writing a Black Panther book for Marvel."[9]
In 2022, Onyebuchi wrote a Captain America preview comic titled Captain America #0, alongside Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzig,[34][35] It was illustrated by Mattia De Iluis.[34][35] Onyebuchi went on to write Captain America: Symbol of Truth, with art by R. B. Silva.[36][37]
2021 Ignyte Award, Community Award for Outstanding Efforts in Service of Inclusion and Equitable Practice in Genre – #PublishingPaidMe, with L. L. McKinney[41][42]
2021 Ignyte Award for Best in Creative Nonfiction – "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream"[41][42]
Legends Black Panther Legends #1, Marvel Comics, 2021.[55]
Black Panther Legends #2, Marvel Comics, 2021.[56]
Black Panther Legends #3, Marvel Comics, 2022.[57]
Black Panther Legends #4, Marvel Comics, 2022.[58]
Marvel's Voices: Legacy volume 1. various authors. Marvel, February 1, 2022. ISBN978-1302928148[9][59]
Captain America: Symbol of Truth #1-14, 750, Marvel Comics, 2022.[60]
Short stories in anthologies
"Still Life with Hammers, a Broom, and a Brick Stacker", Obsidian: Speculating Futures: Black Imagination & The Arts. Downstate Legacies, 2016. ISBN978-0997404142[61]
^ abcdefghKrantz, Rachel. (2021, November 8). "Freedom Writer", Publishers Weekly, 268 (45): 37–38. via EBSCO, accessed June 23, 2022.
^Radel, Felecia Wellington. "Afrofuturism Vibes Are in a Renaissance; Read How Tomorrow May be Here Already", USA Today, May 22, 2022, p. 6. via Gale General OneFile (retrieved June 23, 2022).
^"Tochi Onyebuchi". Author & Book Resources to Support Reading Education. TeachingBooks. Archived from the original on August 31, 2019. Retrieved February 14, 2020.
^Coleman, Christian A. (January 23, 2020). "Interview: Tochi Onyebuchi". Lightspeed Magazine. Archived from the original on January 29, 2020. Retrieved February 12, 2020.
^"2021 Hugo Awards". The Hugo Awards. The World Science Fiction Society. January 2021. Archived from the original on May 6, 2021. Retrieved September 27, 2021.
^"Black Enough". HarperCollins. Archived from the original on June 23, 2022. Retrieved June 23, 2022.
^Chu, John; Gregory, Daryl; Kim, Alice Sola; Larson, Rich; Liu, Ken; Machado, Carmen Maria; MacLeod, Ian R.; Newitz, Annalee; Palmer, Suzanne (March 17, 2020). Made to Order. Simon & Schuster. ISBN9781781087879. Archived from the original on June 23, 2022. Retrieved June 23, 2022.
^Onyebuchi, Tochi (September 2018). "Homo Duplex". Uncanny Magazine Issue Twenty-Four | 884. Archived from the original on July 1, 2022. Retrieved June 23, 2022.
