Diran Adebayo
Born: London 1968
Marital status & family: Single
Best known as: First novel 'Some Kind of Black'
Honours & accolades: 1996 Winner of the Saga Prize for his first novel
Diran Adebayo as his name suggests is of Nigerian descent and was born in London.
He won a scholarship to Malvern public school and is an Oxford law graduate who went on to become a writer, critic and print and broadcast journalist. He's worked on national newspapers including The Guardian, The Daily Mail, The Daily Express in addition to Britain's biggest black newspaper The Voice.
He is fast on his way to becoming one of Britain's most celebrated writers and once shared a stage with the world's most wanted author Salman Rushdie (he of the Satanic Verses fame).
Adebayo has done stints at London Weekend Television and is reported to have once shared a flat with BBC Radio journalist and commentator Henry 'The Big' Bonsu.
His 1996 debut novel, Some Kind of Black, tells the story of a young student's life in London. It was the first novel to win the Saga Prize - an award set up by writer/author Marsha Hunt in 1995 and aimed at encouraging black British writing. His last novel 'My Once Upon a Time' (Abacus) was published in 2000.
He once named both the 19th century Tory Party Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and Karl Marx amongst his list of 'Great Britons'. Adebayo lives in south London and is the brother of the writer, journalist, publisher and braodcaster Dotun Adebayo.
Diran Adebayo was born in London in 1968 to Nigerian parents. He read Law at Oxford University and worked as a journalist on the London newspaper The Voice, before working in television as a researcher and assistant producer.
The manuscript of his novel Some Kind of Black won the inaugural Saga Prize, set up by the actress and novelist Marsha Hunt for black-British writers. The prize included a publishing contract with London publishers Virago, who published the book in 1996. The book centres on Dele, a young black student living in Britain, and his attempt to reconcile his experiences at university in Oxford, his Nigerian roots, and his exploits in urban London, where he explores the music scene, experiments with drugs and becomes involved in black activism after his sister is arrested. The book also won the Author's Club Best Novel of the Year award, a Betty Trask Award and a Writers' Guild Award (New Writer of the Year) in 1996. His second novel, My Once Upon a Time (2000), is a modern day fable set in London's near future.
Diran Adebayo is currently at work on a screenplay, Burnt, for FilmFour, and his third novel. He lives in London.
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Genres (in alphabetical order)
Fiction, Screenplay
Bibliography
Some Kind of Black Virago, 1996
My Once Upon a Time Abacus, 2000
New Writing 12 (co-editor with Jane Rogers and Blake Morrison) Picador, 2003
Buy books by Diran Adebayo at Amazon.co.uk * Buy books by Diran Adebayo at Amazon.co.uk
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Prizes and awards
1995 Saga Prize Some Kind of Black
1996 Authors' Club Best Novel of the Year Some Kind of Black
1996 Writers' Guild Award (New Writer of the Year) Some Kind of Black
1997 Betty Trask Award Some Kind of Black
... as one of Britain's celebrated writers, he once shared a stage with Salman Rushdie.
