Tobi Ogundiran is an award-winning author from Nigeria whose short-story collection Jackal, Jackal won the British Fantasy Award. His stories have been included in various anthologies, including Africa Risen, Book of Witches, and The Big Bad Book of Kaiju. His short story “The Lady of the Yellow-Painted Library” won the Ignyte Award. He has written for both Overwatch and Magic: The Gathering and has recently concluded his duology, Guardian of the Gods. He spent eight years studying in Russia, where he earned his MD at Penza State University, then moved on to earn his MFA at the University of Mississippi. Currently, he resides in Oklahoma and serves as an assistant professor of professional writing, teaching speculative fiction at the University of Oklahoma.
Graison Andrews: You grew up in Nigeria, spent some time in Russia, and later a bit of time in the UK as well, so you’re a bit of a world traveler. You mention on your website that you’re “a citizen of the world.” What does being a citizen of the world mean to you, and how does it influence your writing?
Tobi Ogundiran: It basically means that—and I think this is born out of my peripatetic existence of being in several countries—it allows me to see different cultures and norms from an outsider’s perspective. But I’ve also grown to appreciate that there’s no one way of living, there’s no one way of love, no one way of respecting one’s elders, and I’ve become really appreciative of that. But also flexible in that I can easily blend into whatever society and environment I find myself.
A really good writer is a really good observer.
I find that helps me not only as a human being but also as a writer, because a really good writer is a really good observer. You observe human beings, you observe cultures, how people interact in certain situations, and my experiences have just helped me soak everything up. I’m like a sponge in that regard, and I’ve soaked up these different ways of existence, different stories that people tell themselves in different countries, how they approach these genres, how they approach storytelling, and that influences my writing.
Andrews: Do you think being a citizen of the world is something that you are or something you have to become?
Ogundiran: I think you have to become one. If we’re thinking about being a citizen of the world as just existing on this blue-green orb, then everyone is a citizen of the world. But to be a citizen of the world, you have to partake in what it means to be human beyond your close vicinity, beyond the border of your country. And I think that, with the advent of the internet, folks can claim to be citizens of the world to a certain extent, but you can’t always fully immerse yourself in another culture without actually going there, being there, and experiencing what it is to be there. The extra step would then be to actually immerse yourself physically in that culture, and you get to see and understand things that can’t always be accurately translated in books, movies, or even in the news or on the internet.
Andrews: And since you’ve traveled so many places, what are two or three places that have most inspired you? Are there places in the world that you repeatedly go back to for inspiration?
Ogundiran: Russia. Russia was absolutely not what I expected. You know, in the West, and as a consequence in other parts of the world, Russia is the big bad villain. But I was in Russia for about eight years, and I got to interact with the people. I realized that there’s nuance in how we perceive people and culture. I could also really immerse myself in the culture: Russian fairy tales, which I absolutely love, and Russian literature, which obviously is kind of different from Russian fairy tales. So, seeing all this, knowing and understanding the Russian point of view, really helped me be more open-minded and not judging of people before I had a chance to form my own opinions of them.
Andrews: Do you find that Russian fairy tales and Russian literature have influenced your writing?
Ogundiran: Yes. I wrote a story called “Midnight in Moscow.” It follows a Nigerian who finds himself in Moscow because he’s running from his past. He killed someone, and he finds himself in an old run-down apartment block, and his neighbors are a mysteriously large man and three women who turn out to be characters from Russian folklore. So, the man is called Mikhail, which is the bear in Russian folklore, and the three women are the three matryoshka (nesting) dolls. I really enjoyed writing that story. And I’m working on a couple of projects now in which I play with Russian fairy tales/folklore, something along the lines of The Winternight Trilogy. I don’t know if you’ve heard of that.
Andrews: And then, staying on the topic of taking inspiration from folklore and literature, you mention on your website that Nigerian elements are always present in your fiction. How do you pull Nigerian elements into your writing? I know you’re currently writing a fantasy series, so are you pulling elements of folklore into the world-building? Is there anything else that you like to do?
Ogundiran: I’m Yoruba, which is an ethnic group within Nigeria, and our cosmology is not just a religion but also a philosophical way of thinking, way of life, all merged into one. Our pantheon has the god of thunder, the god of beauty, the god of love, and all that, and it’s really rich. I found it really fascinating, and there are still practitioners of that religion both in modern-day Nigeria and in Brazil, with the descendants of the transatlantic slaves who keep it alive and practice it. I thought it would be interesting to take these various elements and write a story inspired by it. So, there’s not 100 percent fidelity to the actual myths. I’ve taken the gods and the stories with the creative license of an artist and warped it into something more familiar but also unique.
Andrews: How do you decide what aspects of different folklore or different pieces of information to use in your writing?
Ogundiran: Whatever intrigues me. I think as a writer you should write what excites you and not feel beholden to writing what you think is going to get you awards, get you sales, or what have you. You go for what excites you, which in my case is folklore and mythologies and religions around the world, and I sort of synthesize it all into my own work, and I just go from there. I take these discarded elements, I come up with a plotline, characters, and make it very interesting.
I think as a writer you should write what excites you and not feel beholden to writing what you think is going to get you awards, or get you sales, or what have you.
Andrews: You mentioned that for a long time, fantasy was sort of contained in the idea of medieval England, and it’s recently been expanding beyond that. Why do you think that is? Why do you think there’s been that recent change, that recent shift?
Ogundiran: I think it’s several things. It’s a craving for a broader palette of stories. There’s also the cultural aspect of it. There was a boom in much more diverse stories around 2020, and that opened the doors for talented writers who could never get their works published to now get into the publishing industry and start publishing.
Andrews: And I’ve noticed that it seems a common theme to pull folklore or religious systems into all those different fantasies, even from different parts of the world. Do you think folklore and the fantasy genre are intrinsically related?
Ogundiran: Absolutely. The oldest kind of stories are fantastic stories. And that’s the default mode of storytelling for humans. If you trace it far back, it comes to the baseline, which is folklore and fantastical stories. And modern fantasy as a genre, as you understand it, is popularized by Tolkien, who also cites his inspirations as the folktales and the fairy tales of the people of the First Isles. That’s a British man mining his own folktales or folklore to create his fantasy world. Writers from all over the world sort of follow that template, looking at their own cultures, looking at the stories that they’re familiar with, and creating fantastical worlds inspired by those stories.
The oldest kind of stories are fantastic stories. And that’s the default mode of storytelling for humans.
Andrews: Your current series, Guardian of the Gods, resides in the fantasy genre, and you’re currently working with Magic: The Gathering as well. What has been your biggest inspiration within the fantasy genre? Where have you returned to over and over again when creating all these fantasy novels?
Ogundiran: Funnily enough, history. I find myself, as of late, personally reading historical books, especially history when it comes to Africa as a whole, but also Nigeria because we were colonized by the Brits, and many of our historical records were destroyed. I actually have a book right there, The History of the Yorubas, but I couldn’t tell you the history of my people, which is kind of the case for most Nigerians. It’s an unfortunate situation. So, in reading this historical fact, I’m sort of retraining, reconnecting to the ancestors, and I find that that influences my writing because I can be much more historically accurate. But not just accurate—I know much more subtly what I’m twisting to fit the story I’m trying to tell.
And I don’t just read history that relates to Africa, but also US history, world history, all of which is really fascinating. It reads like fantasy. Just that broad knowledge, having this compost heap of knowledge, which you might not know exactly when it will come into play in your own writing. It might be instantly, it might be five years, ten years down the line, locked in your subconscious, and it’s simmering, simmering, and at the right moment—it’s funny—you look at where it’s headed, it unwinds, and you understand the story you’re writing.
Andrews: In what way do you think history is connected to fantasy? Because we’ve talked about how folklore is sort of the building blocks of fantasy. So how is history, then, connected to fantasy?
Ogundiran: If we’re looking at a really elemental level, say, the Norse myths or the Greeks myths, these are stories they told themselves. And through these, we understand the gods they worshipped. We understand what kind of people they were, and why they came up with those kinds of stories, because they lived way up north. It’s a story, but in a way, it’s a historical account, in that it allows us, thousands of years removed from those people, to understand their thinking and why certain traditions exist.
You could say the same for the Greeks. You look at their Odyssey. You understand what these ancient people cherished, what they fought for, what they loved. I think, in that sense, history is really helpful to understand because we’re always trying to understand the people who came before us, to understand why they did what they did.
Andrews: In 2024 your collection of short stories, Jackal, Jackal, won a British Fantasy Award. Did you feel pressure writing your next projects? Because this one had won an award, and you’re like, “The next one needs to be at the same level.”
Ogundiran: Yes, for sure. Imposter syndrome never goes away. I still get it. It’s like a 50/50 split. Sometimes I think about everything I’ve done, everything I’ve accomplished. I feel like . . . can I top this? Can I really prove that I have more? I haven’t reached the peak and all that. And sometimes I’m in the weeds, and the words are flowing, I’m like, this is the best thing ever! I’m a phenomenal writer!
Andrews: You’ve written many short stories that have been featured in various anthologies as well as your own collection of short stories. And now you’ve got your series. How do you approach writing a short story versus writing a novel? Do you have a preference? Do you find different difficulties approaching each type of writing?
Ogundiran: They are two different beasts. And this is something I tell my students all the time. Some writers are good novel writers but terrible short-story writers. And there are excellent short-story writers who can’t sustain a story over a long period of time. So, it requires two different skill sets, and writing a short story is kind of like a sustained version or a snapshot of a larger story. You want to focus on fewer characters. You want to focus on an idea, as opposed to multiple polyphonic symptoms of different ideas and characters. When writing a novel, I find myself thinking more about the structure. In a short story, I play around a lot. I experiment. In one of my famous short stories, “The Goatkeeper’s Harvest,” I sort of flip between the present and the past with each section. And so, at the end, the whole picture becomes clear. You could do that in a novel, but it would be difficult.
Andrews: You were primarily a writer for years before you became a professor. How has being a professor affected your writing?
Ogundiran: Well, I find myself paying more attention to the way I have to come and articulate to students exactly why X works or why it doesn’t work, which is not something I actively did when I was just a writer and not a professor. It came intuitively. I mean, I’ve studied. I was reading countless books. I was actively asking myself what choices the author made to achieve this effect, putting all of that into my big bag of tools to employ in my own writing. But I found that more and more, I’ve been more critical of the books I read: I can see exactly how the author is working, so I can also deconstruct it with my students.
Andrews: What kind of writer do you describe yourself as? And then, follow that up with how you describe yourself as a professor. And are those identities intertwined or separate?
Ogundiran: I’m always trying to capture the wonder I felt as a child reading, encountering a new reality for the first time. So, I’m always going for that sense of wonder. Which, for me as a reader, is now really hard to capture in the books I read. I’m thinking of a book I’ve read that actually blew my mind: Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke. That just filled me with wonder. When I’m writing, I’m always striving for that sense of wonder in me, but also in my readers.
And then, how I describe myself as a professor. I really want to have my students—ostensibly they’re all writers or they’re going to be writers—I really want to give them the experience to succeed and have them be the kind of writer that they want to be. Writing is a very delicate thing, and professors, I feel, should be more like stewards. A Yoruba proverb says there’s several ways to the market, and there’s several roads to the same destination. So let the students meander, find their way.
A Yoruba proverb says there’s several ways to the market, and there’s several roads to the same destination. So let the students meander, find their way.
Andrews: Which piece of writing do you take most pride in, and why?
Ogundiran: Wow. That’s a tough one. That’s like asking me to choose one of my children! I wrote a short story called “The Lady of the Yellow-Painted Library,” which is basically about a traveling telephone salesman who misplaces a library book and is now haunted by a supernatural librarian as he flees from state to state because he’s lost this book. And I wrote that on a whim. I had a lot of trouble getting that published, actually. Rejections upon rejections, and then it got published in an anthology called Africa Risen, and then LeVar Burton picked it up for his podcast. He audio-produced it, and the story just blew up. It was a really wonderful rendition, too, so you should have a listen to it. And I’m so proud of that because I had fun writing it.
Andrews: What is something you want readers to know about you and your work?
Ogundiran: I guess, I want to be read. That’s sort of the wish of every writer, everyone who puts pen to paper, they want to be read. If I know at the very least that one person, two people, three people, are somewhere in the world reading my work and coming away with a sense of marvel, filled with wonder, or just had a good time, that to me is the pinnacle of success.
