Diran Adebayo is a British novelist, cultural critic and broadcaster best known for his vivid portrayals of modern London life and his distinctive use of language.

Born Oludiran Adebayo in London in 1968, Adebayo won a major scholarship to Malvern College where he boarded as an adolescent, and is an Oxford University Law graduate.

His debut novel, Some Kind of Black, was one of the first to articulate a British-born African perspective, and it won him numerous awards, including the Writers Guild of Great Britains New Writer of the Year Award, the Authors Club First Novel Award, the 1996 Saga Prize, and a Betty Trask Award. It was also longlisted for the Booker Prize, serialised on British Radio and is now a Virago Modern Classic. His follow-up, the neo-noir fable My Once Upon A Time, which hes described as a latter day Pilgrims Progress, fused film noir and fairytale with Yoruba myth to striking effect, and solidified his reputation as a groundbreaker. In 2004 he co-edited New Writing 12, the British Councils annual anthology of British and Commonwealth literature, with Blake Morrison and Jane Rogers. In 2009, he donated the short story Calculus to Oxfams Ox-Tales project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Adebayos story was published in the Air collection.

Adebayo worked as Senior News Reporter at The Voice newspaper and as a reporter on BBC television before his manuscript for Some Kind of Black won the Saga Prize. He was formerly a columnist for New Nation newspaper, and is a regular presence in the British press, writing for newspapers such as The Guardian, The Independent and The New Statesman magazine. In 2005, he wrote the documentary, Out of Africa for BBC Television and in 2003, The Evening Standard named him one of Londons 100 most influential people.


He is currently one of the writers-in-residence of the charity First Story.
Adebayo is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the Na