Tomi Adeyemi

For reasons unclear, her second novel, Children of Virtue and Vengeance was pushed back from its initial release date of March 2019 to June 2019. According to some Amazon users, the book was pushed back again from June 2019 to December 2019. Adeyemi later admitted on her Instagram that her publisher offered her two choices: June 2019 and December 2019, but she chose the former so fans would not have to wait. Unfortunately, the workload was too much and the author, editors, and publisher agreed to give the second book more time.

Adeyemi's debut novel, Children of Blood and Bone, was released in March 2018, and debuted at number 1 on The New York Times Young Adult Hardcover Bestseller List. It is a young-adult (YA) fantasy novel, featuring protagonist Zélie Adebola, who fights a monarchy to return magic to her people. Adeyemi has said she wanted to write a fantasy novel set in West Africa so that "a little Black girl [could] pick up my book one day and see herself as the star...I want her to know that she’s beautiful and she matters and she can have a crazy, magical adventure even if an ignorant part of the world tells her she can never be Hermione Granger." Children of Blood and Bone was awarded the 2018 Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy and is a finalist for the 2019 Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book.

In November 2018, Adeyemi accused Nora Roberts of plagiarizing the title of her book, Children of Blood and Bone. Adeyemi later retracted the accusation saying "after talking to her, I believe our titles were created in isolation". Roberts later clarified that her book had been titled and submitted to her publisher one year before Adeyemi's. She also criticised Adeyemi's lack of fact checking and the fact that Adeyemi had not deleted the accusation a day later. According to the United States Copyright Office, copyright "does not protect names, titles, slogans, or short phrases."

Adeyemi graduated from Hinsdale Central High School in Hinsdale, Illinois in 2011. Tomi was qualified into the Hinsdale Central High School Foundation's Young Scholar Program in 2008 and went on to win their "Young Scholars" scholarship in 2010-2011. During her senior year, Tomi also received the Rani Sharma scholarship. She went on to graduate from Harvard University with an honors degree in English Literature, then studied West African mythology and culture in Salvador, Brazil, on a fellowship.

Fox 2000 has purchased the film adaptation rights to the book. Reportedly the deals for the publishing and film rights were approximately seven figures. Deadline described it as "one of the biggest YA debut novel publishing deals ever."

Tomi Adeyemi (born August 1, 1993) is a Nigerian-American novelist and creative writing coach. She is known for her book Children of Blood and Bone, the first in the Legacy of Orïsha trilogy published by Henry Holt Books for Young Readers, which won the 2018 Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy and is a finalist for the 2019 Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book.

Tomi Adeyemi was born on August 1st, 1993 in the United States to parents who emigrated from Nigeria, and struggled financially when Adeyemi was a child. Her father was a physician in Nigeria but found employment as a taxi driver while he waited to transfer his qualifications. Adeyemi's mother worked as a cleaning woman. Adeyemi grew up in Chicago, not being exposed to her Nigerian heritage, her parents decided not to teach her or her siblings their native tongue. She would later embrace her heritage as an adult, explaining, "I didn't think too much of it and I think that is the kind of an experience of the first generation. You're just trying to fit in. You don't realize how cool your culture is until you get out of that phase of trying to fit in." She would later describe one of her novels as a love letter to her culture.