Onyebuchi was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, to Nigerian Igbo parents Nnamdi Onyebuchi and Elizabeth Ihuegbu Onyebuchi, and has a brother, Chibuike, and two sisters, Chinoye and Uchechi. His first name means "praise God" in Igbo. He lived in New Britain, Connecticut until 1998, when his father died at aged 39, after which he grew up in Newington. Onyebuchi was an avid reader growing up and was strongly influenced by X-Men comics. While he appreciated works by black authors he was required to read in high school, such as Their Eyes Were Watching God, Invisible Man and Native Son, he preferred adventure and science fiction stories. In high school, he studied abroad for a year in France, where he fell in love with Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo, and was inspired when he learned Dumas was of African ancestry. He majored in political science at Yale University, graduating in 2009. He earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in Screenwriting from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, a master's degree in Global Economic Law from Instituts d'études politiques in France, and a law degree from Columbia Law School.
Career
After earning his law degree, Onyebuchi began a career in civil right law, working in the Civil Rights Bureau of the New York StateAttorney General's Office, as well as for New York City's Legal Aid Society. Onyebuchi eventually felt burnt out. Onyebuchi wrote extensively growing up and attempted to sell his first novel in high school. He had written 17 novels by the time he finally published his first novel, Beasts Made of Night, in 2017. It won the 2018 Ilube Nommo Award for Best Speculative Fiction Novel by an African. He published a sequel, Crown of Thunder, in 2018, followed by War Girls in 2019. In 2020, he published his first book aimed at an adult audience, Riot Baby, revolving around Kev, born during the 1992 Los Angeles riots and his sister, Ella, who possesses telekinetic powers. Onyebuchi drew on his experience as a lawyer in setting much of the novel at Rikers Island in New York, where Kev is wrongfully incarcerated. He has also written for Asimov's Science Fiction magazine and Ideomancer.
