An almost-blind mother pawns her daughter off to save her. A grieving son must bury his Muslim father in twenty-four hours in the thick of winter. A doctor battles to save her partner from himself. Desperation makes a young businesswoman seek out a spiritual experience. A dominatrix wants to give life to her sexual kinks in her repressive household. The weight of the word "slave" is put to the test during a first date in conservative Idaho. A boy escapes his bipolar mother.



These stories and more are an excavation of what it means to exist at the crossroads of desire, ambition, and tradition. Tehingbola explores the indelible erasure of personhood when one tries to fit into the hard places where injustice reigns. She fillets the flesh as these characters try to exercise autonomy in their worlds and swim against the uncontrollable tides that mould their lives.



Ayotola Tehingbola (she/her, b. '93, Lagos) is a lawyer, photographer, writer, and translator.



Her debut story collection, LAGOS WILL BE HARD FOR YOU, was a finalist for the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing. It is published by Masobe Books in West Africa (2025) and forthcoming from Jacaranda Books in the UK & Commonwealth in 2026.



Her work has appeared in The Common, CRAFT, Witness Magazine, Washington Square Review, etc., has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Anthology, and was selected for the 2025 Best Small Fictions anthology.



She has been supported by Hudson Valley Writers Center, Alexa Rose Foundation, Idaho Commission on the Arts, Kimbilio for Black Fiction, and Key West Literary Seminar.