Lola Olufemi

Lola Olufemi (/ɒluˈfɛmi/; born 1996) is a British writer.[1][2][3] She is an organiser with the London Feminist Library,[4] and her writing has been published in many national and international magazines and newspapers. She is the author of Experiments in Imagining Otherwise and Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power,[5] and the co-editor of A FLY Girl's Guide to University: Being a Woman of Colour at Cambridge and Other Institutions of Power and Elitism.

Lola Olufemi
Born1996 (age 26–27)
London, England
Alma materSelwyn College, Cambridge
OccupationWriter
Years active–present

Early life and education

Olufemi was born and grew up in London, their family home being in Edmonton. She attended Enfield County School[3] and studied English at Selwyn College, Cambridge.[6] She was the Women's Officer for Cambridge University Students' Union,[7] and one of the facilitator's of FLY, the university's network for women and non-binary people of colour.[8][9]

She is currently researching for a PhD, with a TECHNE AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Studentship with the University of Westminster and Stuart Hall Foundation.[10][11]

Work

Writing and speaking

Olufemi has written and spoken on a range of topics including: art and culture;[12][13] feminism, gender and sexism (including the Women's Strike and Time's Up movements);[14][15][16] food equality;[17] climate justice and race;[18] race and racism, including archives of radical Black British activism;[19] and higher education issues, including institutional justice and sexual harassment in universities,[7][20] and decolonising practices in higher education[21][22] (for which she was targeted with a "vicious and misleading"[23] sexist and racist harassment by British right-wing press).[24][8][25]

Poet Jay Bernard interviewed Olufemi for Housmans Bookshop, and the pair discussed the "internationalist ethos of black feminist movements in the 70s and 80s", connecting feminist struggles such as protests against sexual violence with opposition to settler colonialism.[26]

Olufemi with Che Gossett and Sarah Shin organised a month-long programme of talks and events under the title "Revolution is not a one-time event" in summer 2020. The launch event, hosted by Silver Press on 9 June 2020, took the form of a fundraiser for Black liberation. The fundraiser was hosted by Akwugo Emejulu and featured Che Gossett, Helena Rubinstein, Ru Kaur, Olufemi and Amrit Wilson in conversation.[27]

Art

Olufemi is a member of "bare minimum", an interdisciplinary, anti-work arts collective.[1] She has been commissioned by Tate Modern to run a feminist workshop as part of a Feminist Library event.[28]

Influences

Olufemi cites several key feminist, trans-inclusive,[29][26] and Black feminist thinkers and collectives that have influenced her, in interviews and her writing, including: Angela Davis, Ann Oakley, Assata Shakur, Audre Lorde, the Brixton Black Women's Group, the British Black Panthers, Claudia Jones, the Combahee River Collective, Gail Lewis, the Grunwick Strikers, Judith Butler, Kate Millett, Liz Obi, Olive Morris, OWAAD, Saidya Hartman,[30][31] Stella Dadzie, Shulamith Firestone, Silvia Federici, Selma James, the Young Lords, and Sylvia Wynter.[2][5][32]

Bibliography
  • A FLY Girl's Guide to University: Being a Woman of Colour at Cambridge and Other Institutions of Power and Elitism (Verve Poetry Press, 2019), edited with Odelia Younge, Waithera Sebatindira, and Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan.[33]
  • Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power (Pluto Press, 2020).
  • Red, shortlisted for the 2020 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize in the Fiction category.[34]
  • Experiments in Imagining Otherwise (Hajar Press, 2021).

References
  1. "ICA | Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power". Institute of Contemporary Arts. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  2. Gush, Charlotte (30 October 2017). "we should all be feminist killjoys like cambridge student leader lola olufemi". i-D. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  3. Davis, Barney; Eleanor Rose (27 October 2017). "I'm proud my daughter took on Cambridge for its 'colonial curriculum'". Evening Standard. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  4. "Introducing our new Volunteer Coordinator". The Feminist Library. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  5. Sparrow, Josie; Lola Olufemi. "A commitment to care... and to disobedience". New Socialist. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  6. "Author Details". New Internationalist. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  7. Olufemi, Lola (9 February 2018). "The fight against sexual misconduct at universities must go on". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  8. "We stand in solidarity with Lola Olufemi". gal-dem. 26 October 2017. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  9. Penney, Sophie (13 October 2016). "'It's exhausting living as the other': FLY co-founder talks race in Cambridge". Varsity Online. Varsity Publications Ltd. Retrieved 24 June 2021.
  10. University of Westminster, London. "Doctoral researcher Lola Olufemi awarded techne AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Studentship". www.westminster.ac.uk. Retrieved 29 October 2020.
  11. "Lola Olufemi". Stuart Hall Foundation. Retrieved 29 October 2020.
  12. Olufemi, Lola (11 March 2020). "Victoria Sin: 'I'm trying to break down the binary of thinking and feeling'". www.sleek-mag.com. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  13. Olufemi, Lola (26 April 2017). "5 Questions for Zadie Smith". Fly. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  14. Olufemi, Lola (26 March 2020). "Why imagination is the most powerful tool that feminists have at our disposal". gal-dem. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  15. Olufemi, Lola (7 March 2019). "Women: stop working!". New Internationalist. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  16. Olufemi, Lola (25 January 2018). "Time is not Up for the fight against sexual violence in Cambridge". Varsity Online. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  17. Olufemi, Lola (19 March 2020). "Poor Mothers Do Not Have The Luxury Of Considering The Nutritional Value Of Food". www.refinery29.com. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  18. "Cambridge Literary Festival: Guppi Bola, Priyamvada Gopal & Lola Olufemi - The Unsustainable Whiteness of Green". Cambridge Live. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  19. Olufemi, Lola (28 August 2019). "Who were the British Black Panthers?". New Internationalist. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  20. Olufemi, Lola (10 September 2018). "What does institutional justice look like?". New Internationalist. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  21. "How to navigate a white institution: with Priyamvada Gopal, Ọrẹ Ogunbiyi and Lola Olufemi". Versobooks.com. 11 June 2019. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  22. Neenan, Jack (24 January 2018). "The decolonising of SOAS and Cambridge in conversation". SOAS Blog. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  23. Campbell, Lisa (25 October 2017). "Cambridge condemns abuse of student following literature curriculum coverage". The Bookseller. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  24. Olufemi, Lola (21 June 2017). "Postcolonial writing is not an afterthought; it is British literature". Varsity Online. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  25. "Ruling". www.ipso.co.uk. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  26. "Guest Post: Lola Olufemi in conversation with Jay Bernard". Housmans Bookshop. 26 May 2020. Retrieved 12 September 2020.
  27. "Revolution is not a one-time event". The White Review. Retrieved 22 January 2021.
  28. "Feminist Power Station: With Feminist Library". Workshop at Tate Modern. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  29. Parsons, Vic (3 March 2020). "Trans allies pull out of University of Oxford feminist conference over ties with 'clearly transphobic' Woman's Place UK". PinkNews. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  30. Podcast, London Review Bookshop. "Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Saidiya Hartman and Lola Olufemi". Mixcloud. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  31. "Podcast: Saidiya Hartman and Lola Olufemi: Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments". London Review of Books. 20 November 2019. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  32. "Feminism, Interrupted: A Conversation with Lola Olufemi and Momtaza Mehri". London Review Bookshop blog. Retrieved 22 April 2020.
  33. "Lola Olufemi, Odelia Younge, Waithera Sebatindira, Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan". Verve Poetry Press. Retrieved 21 April 2020.
  34. "2020 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize: Shortlist". Wasafiri Magazine. Retrieved 22 January 2021.
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