Funso Aiyejina is a poet, short story writer, playwright, and university lecturer. He was born in Ososo, Edo State, Nigeria. He is a graduate of the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), Ile-Ife, Nigeria; Acadia University, Wolfville, NS, Canada; and the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. For over a decade, he taught at Obafemi Awolowo University before relocating to the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago where he is currently Professor of Literatures in English and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education. His short stories and poems have been published in local and international journals, and have been included in a number of international anthologies such as The Anchor Book of African Stories, Literature Without Borders, Kiss and Quarrel: Yoruba/English - Strategies for Mediation and The New African Poetry.

He has been described by Gerald Moore and Ulli Beier, editors of The Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry, as “one of Nigeria’s finest satirists” (413). His first book of poetry, A Letter to Lynda and Other Poems (1988) won the Association of Nigerian Authors’ Poetry Prize in 1989. He is also the author of I, The Supreme and Other Poems (2004) and The Legend of the Rockhills and Other Stories (1999) (his first book of fiction) which won Best First Book (Africa), Commonwealth Writers Prize, 2000.

As a critic, he has published widely on African and West Indian Literature and Culture. He is the editor of A Place in the World: Essays and Tributes in Honour of Earl Lovelace@70 (2008), co-editor of Caribbean Literature in a Global Context (2006), editor of Earl Lovelace: Growing in the Dark (Selected Essays)(2003), Self-Portrait: Interviews with Ten West Indian Writers and Two Critics (2003). The Character Who Walked Out On His Author, his first stage play, has been performed in Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Nigeria.