Okwiri Oduor was born in Nairobi, Kenya. At the age of 25, she won the Caine Prize for African Writing 2014 for her story 'My Father’s Head'. Later that year, she was named on the Hay Festival's Africa39 list of 39 African writers under 40 who would define trends in African literature. She has been a MacDowell Colony fellow, and she received her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She has a story forthcoming in Granta, and Things They Lost is her debut novel. She lives in Germany.