Lola Akande

Lola Akande, born on 3 October 1965 in Kwara State, Nigeria, is a renowned academic and fiction writer. She teaches African literature at the Department of English, University of Lagos. Akande has authored four novels, a collection of short stories, and a monograph.

Her first novel, *In Our Place*, was published by Macmillan Nigeria in 2012. This was followed by *What It Takes* (2016), which won the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) Prize for Prose Fiction. Akande's latest novels include *The Truth about Sadia* (2023), endorsed by the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA). Her collection of short stories, *Suitors Are Scarce in Lagos*, published in 2020, won the ANA Prize for Short Story in 2022.

Akande has also contributed to academic literature with a monograph titled *The City in the African Novel - A Thematic Rendering of Urban Spaces* (2019). Her works explore themes such as urban life and social issues, earning her recognition in Nigerian literary circles.