Teju Cole is a novelist, photographer and critic. He was born in the United States in 1975, and lived in Nigeria until he went to university.

His first novel, Open City, featured on numerous book of the year lists and was the winner of prizes such as the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Internationaler Literaturpreis and was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize of the Royal Society of Literature. Cole is the Gore Vidal Professor of the Practice of Creative Writing at Harvard.