We Were Girls Once

‘Odafen writes with great insight and compassion about life, sisterhood, family, community and power. Each of her characters is so fully realised, their histories so richly drawn that they feel alive. This is a superbly written novel’ * Chika Unigwe, author of The Middle Daughter *
‘A gorgeous story of the redemptive power of friendship. With moving and immersive prose, Odafen invites us into the lives of three friends whose lives take remarkable turns, diverge and return to each other. Deftly, gracefully, she paints a vivid and unflinching portrait of Nigerian society of the past and present, its failures and triumphs… I thoroughly felt this book’ * Francesca Ekwuyasi, author of Butter Honey Pig Bread *

Aiwanose Odafen is a second year MFA fiction student at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She holds an MBA from the University of Oxford. She has contributed to published non-fiction works, including most recently, the I AM ADONA project, a collection of essays on women’s empowerment, and participated in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus Trust Writing Workshop. She was longlisted for the 2020 Commonwealth Writers Short Story Prize. Her first novel, Tomorrow I Become a Woman, was published in 2021.

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