Bayo Ojikutu
Born: 1971 in Chicago
Connection to Illinois: Ojikutu spent his early childhood in Chicago before his family moved to the suburban village of Glenwood, IL, where he lived for the balance of his remaining youth. Ojikutu took his BA at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before writing his first novel. His first two novels are based in the city, as is some of his earliest short work. The author, his wife and son currently reside in the Chicagoland area. Biography: Bayo Ojikutu is the author of the critically-acclaimed novels 47th Street Black and Free Burning . His second novel, Free Burning (Random House/Crown) has been called “Gritty, lyrical [and]intense,” by Kirkus Book Review, “the most foreboding love letter the city [Chicago] has ever received” (Tim Lowery- Timeout Chicago), & “a searing portrayal of one of the shameful realities within an oft unjust society” (Black Issues Book Review). 47th Street Black (Random House/Crown), which is set in a tumultuous crime-ridden, urban-milieu of the 1960’s. Ojikutu's fiction has appeared in various anthologies, magazines and collections. Ojikutu has taught at the University of Chicago, DePaul University (and elsewhere) for many years. His work has garnered recognition from the Pushcart Prize (nomination), the African-American Literary Alliance and PEN-Beyond Margins.
Awards:
- 47th Street Black Washington Prize for Fiction, Great American Award
- Free Burning Outstanding Achievement in Literature-Fiction, Black Excellence Award
Web: http://www.triquarterly.org/contributors/bayo-ojikutu
Web: http://thenervousbreakdown.com/author/bojikutu/
Web: https://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/June-2008/Our-Lake/Water-Color-Lines-by-Bayo-Ojikutu/
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayo_Ojikutu
Selected Titles
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47th Street Black ISBN: 0609808478 OCLC: 50339258 Three Rivers Press, New York : ©2003. After stumbling upon the body of their Chicago neighborhood's black liaison to the mafia, JC and Mookie, two high school dropouts, exchange their dead-end existence for jobs with Salvie, the local mob boss. |
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Chicago Noir ISBN: 1888451890 OCLC: 61265958 Akashic Books, New York : ©2005. “If ever a city was made to be the home of noir, it’s Chicago. These writers go straight to Chicago’s noir heart” (Aleksandar Hemon, National Book Award finalist and New York Times–bestselling author of The Lazarus Project). Chicago’s rough-and-tumble tough-guy reputation may have been replaced in recent years by the image of a tourist- and family-friendly town—but that original city isn’t gone. The hard-bitten streets once represented by James Farrell and Nelson Algren may have shifted locales, and they may be populated by different ethnicities, but Chicago is still a place where people struggle to survive and where, for many, crime is the only means for their survival. The stories in Chicago Noir reclaim that territory, in tales of hired killers and jazz men, drunks and dreamers, corrupt cops and ticket scalpers and junkies, of a place where hard cases face their sad fates, and pay for their sins in blood. Brand new stories by Neal Pollack, Achy Obejas, Alexai Galaviz-Budziszewski, Adam Langer, Joe Meno, Peter Orner, Kevin Guilfoile, Bayo Ojikutu, Jeffery Renard Allen, Luciano Guerriero, Claire Zulkey, Andrew Ervin, M.K. Meyers, Todd Dills, C.J. Sullivan, Daniel Buckman, Amy Sayre-Roberts, and Jim Arndorfer. |
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Free Burning ISBN: 1400082897 OCLC: 67375049 Three Rivers Press, New York : ©2006. When Tommie Simms loses his corporate job, he gets caught up in Chicago's treacherous underworld--the last fate anyone ever intended for him. |