Black History Month Author Picks

We asked some of our favourite authors to choose their perfect picks for Black History Month. And boy did they deliver! So read on for the most essential, enjoyable and excellent reads for October.

Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé is the instant New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of Ace of Spades, Where Sleeping Girls Lie and Four Eids and a Funeral. She has also written stories for Marvel's Spider-Verse and BBC's Doctor Who. In 2024, she was a World Book Day author with her title The Doomsday Date. Faridah is an avid tea drinker, a collector of strange mugs, and a graduate from a university in Scotland where she received a BA in English Literature. She also has an MA in Shakespeare Studies from King's College London. When she isn't spinning dark tales, Faridah can be found examining the deeper meanings in Disney Channel original movies.

Yomi Adegoke is a multi-award-winning journalist and author. She is currently a columnist at the Guardian, a contributing editor at Elle magazine and is the former host of the Women's Fiction Prize podcast. In 2018, she co-wrote the bestselling book Slay In Your Lane and the same year was named one of the most influential people in London by the Evening Standard. She also was awarded the Groucho Maverick and Marie Clare Future Shaper awards. In 2021, she was named on the Forbes 30 under 30 list and in 2023 she was awarded a GQ Man of the Year award. Her debut novel The List was a Sunday Times Bestseller.

Zeinab Badawi is an award-winning broadcaster, journalist, and filmmaker. She is President of SOAS University of London and is an honorary fellow of her alma mater St Hilda's College, Oxford. Born in Sudan, she has worked in the British media for several decades. Zeinab is a recipient of the President's Medal of the British Academy, a Patron of the United Nations Association UK, and is on the boards of the Arts, Humanities and Research Council, MINDS (the Mandela Institute for Development Studies), the International Crisis Group and Afrobarometer. She was previously Chair of the Royal African Society. An African History of Africa is her first book.

Oyinkan Braithwaite is a Nigerian-British novelist and writer. Her first novel, My Sister, The Serial Killer, was published in 2018 to wide acclaim. It was a Sunday Times bestseller, longlisted for The Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, and won the Crime and Thriller Book of the Year in the British Book Awards 2020. Her novel Cursed Daughters was published in September 2025

Bernardine Evaristo, MBE is the award-winning author of eight books of fiction and verse fiction that explore aspects of the African diaspora. Her novel Girl, Woman, Other made her the first black woman to win the Booker Prize in 2019, as well winning the Fiction Book of the Year Award at the British Book Awards in 2020, where she also won Author of the Year, and the Indie Book Award. She also became the first woman of colour and black British writer to reach No.1 in the UK paperback fiction chart in 2020. In 2025 she was awarded the Women's Prize Outstanding Contribution Award. Her other awards and honours include an MBE in 2009 and an OBE in 2020. Her writing spans reviews, essays, drama and radio, and she has edited and guest-edited national publications, including The Sunday Time's Style magazine. Bernardine is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University, London, and President of the Royal Society of Literature. She lives in London with her husband.

William Rayfet Hunter is a British-Jamaican writer from the North West of England. They now live and work in East London. Their non-fiction writing has been published by VICE, Dazed, and the Evening Standard. Sunstruck, their debut novel, won the #Merky Books New Writers' Prize 2022.

Born in Botswana, raised in the West Midlands, UK and living in London, Warona Jay studied law at the University of Kent and King's College London before switching to a creative writing PhD at Brunel. She was shortlisted for the Sony Young Movellist of the Year Award judged by Malorie Blackman and longlisted for Penguin Random House's WriteNow Scheme in 2020. The Grand Scheme of Things is her debut novel.

Mendez was born and raised in the Black Country. He now lives in London and is studying for an MA in Black British Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. He has been a performing member of two theatre companies, and worked as a voice actor, appearing on audiobooks by Andrea Levy, Paul Theroux and Ben Okri, most recently recording Ian Wright's A Life in Football for Hachette Audio. As a writer, he has contributed to the Times Literary Supplement and the Brixton Review of Books. Rainbow Milk is his debut novel.

Jason Okundaye was born in 1997 in South London, where he remains. His essays and features have been published in the Guardian, Evening Standard, British GQ and the London Review of Books, amongst others. Revolutionary Acts is his first book.

Eloghosa Osunde is an award-winning writer and multidisciplinary artist. Their critically acclaimed debut novel Vagabonds! was shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize and longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Their second novel Necessary Fiction was published in July 2025. They are the recipient of the Plimpton Prize for Fiction 2021, the MoAD's African Literary Award 2023 and an ASME Award for Fiction. Their writing has been published in The Paris Review, Granta, Guernica and elsewhere. They move between Nigeria, Nairobi, New York City and wherever else their work calls. They can be found online at eloghosaosunde.com.