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Child of Congo: A Poet’s Journey Through History and Self

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What does it mean to inherit a history you didn’t create? In Child of Congo, Laurène Southe grapples with this very question. At just 24, this Congolese-Austrian poet has crafted a debut that feels both timely and timeless. Throughout the collection, she wrestles with questions that have haunted displaced peoples for generations: What remains of home when borders are redrawn? How does one carry the weight of inherited trauma while forging a new path?

In verses that alternate between devastating clarity and luminous hope, Southe examines the lasting echoes of colonialism in modern Congo. Born from her performances at Vienna’s African Writers Club and refined during her residency at Echo Correspondence, her work refuses to look away from uncomfortable truths about global exploitation while celebrating the resilience of those who survive it.

In this exclusive interview with Akpata Magazine, Southe opens up about the journey that led to this remarkable collection.

1. What was the initial spark or idea that led you to write “Child of Congo”? 

When I speak of ‘Child of Congo’ these days, it feels like its own entity. And just like a living being, it went through several phases. It first began when I participated in an exhibition and was asked to interpret my writing into a visual medium.

It’s one of the few times I had to sit down and really reflect on what I wanted to say—what bridge I wanted to cross, so to speak. That is how the first poem and title of the book were born. Once I knew what I wanted to say, it became a matter of finding the space and time to rediscover myself. This takes us to the second phase of the book: the unveiling of Congolese history.

It is often said that  you can’t know where you’re going without knowing where you’re from There was so much  I didn’t know about my own history. I attended a residency and within that period, I spent more time researching than crafting poems.

Finally, the last  stage was presented to me when the book was done and I left it on the side for almost a year. It was the realization that its tales are bigger than me. I wasn’t just telling my story; I was telling  the stories of my ancestors who live on through me and countless others. These are universal themes. Every human being will experience at least one of the trajectories mentioned in the book during their lifetime. 

2. Who are some poets or writers who have influenced your work, and how? 

I always go back to Emily Dickinson and Wanda Coleman for two completely different reasons. I see a lot of similarities in our lives, Emily and I. And that is why I identify myself with her poems the most, and, arguably, we project a common melancholic writing style.

Wanda Coleman, on the other hand, is a very eccentric writer—not only in her words but also in how she chooses to display them. As a writer who wasn’t made in any classroom or institute, that rebellious attitude, of course, speaks to me.

Her work encourages me to bend the rules but also to simply be myself and accept the fact that I am not going to sound like or have the same approach as many of the successful writers we have today because I am cut from a different cloth. With differences come complexities, lack of relatability, and also uniqueness. If I can be known for anything, I hope it’s that I have brought something new to the table and encouraged weird writers like myself to be their own version of a storyteller.  

3. Your collection explores themes of identity, displacement, and heritage. Can you elaborate on the importance of these themes to you personally?

As I mentioned before, I think those are universal themes. Everyone has experienced displacement or an identity crisis at least once in their lives. These are vital to me because they are a part of my own story.  The fact that I can speak and write in English today is due to the European education I received.

It wouldn’t have been possible if my parents hadn’t decided to leave everything that they knew behind and start a new life in Europe. The struggle of navigating an African household within a Western society is not spoken about enough, even though it affects a great portion of our population.

It is important to me to offer this perspective outside of the American and UK narratives because they tend to have  a clearer sense of identity.  However, in our case, there is a vacuum in smaller and lesser-known regions where children with a multicultural background are often forced to choose between them rather than forge a blend of both worlds. Many members of the African sphere, whether in the diaspora or on the continent, remain oblivious to this reality. 

4. Some of the poems in the collection, particularly the first poem, Child of Congo, contrast beautiful imagery of pre-colonial Africa with harsh realities like war, exploitation, and poverty caused by colonialism. Can you discuss how this contrast functions in the poem? Why was it important to you to include this contrast?

It is important for me to include contrast because I believe, especially in the Congolese context, that truth has been hidden and watered down since the creation of its nation as we know it today. I don’t want to get political here; I just wanted to shed light, in this poem and throughout the book, on realities I think the general public just doesn’t know about. Many individuals do not understand that we’re imprisoned in a vicious cycle.

I would go as far as to depict it as modern slavery—here everything you could think of in the West comes at the cost of impoverished regions through forced labour, tarnish, and death. Can you imagine a reality where a victim’s only way of survival is to run into the arms of those who inflicted harm upon them? I feel like if people truly took a moment to digest this information, the world wouldn’t be in the shape it is today. 

5. The poems also address the impact of colonialism and its lasting effects. How do you see these effects playing out in the present day?

The effects of colonialism—and most importantly, its lack of rehabilitation—are really what I wanted to focus on. My family never got the opportunity to heal from what they endured, and as a result, their traumas were passed onto their children. What Congolese people had to face during Leopold II’s reign is monstrous and inhuman. How do you rectify such abuse? Surely not by closing the chapter like nothing ever happened and leaving its victims to find salvation on their own. In any other case, when someone is injured, they are given treatment and a time to heal. I don’t think the Congolese people were ever given that opportunity. Now, you have generations walking among us with missing limbs—-metaphorically. We’re talking about traumas that have never been addressed. Unless one member of the family tree chooses to seek help, the trauma will just keep being passed on. And what trauma does is resurface in different shapes and forms, all stemming from the same root: the unaddressed side effects of colonialism.

6. What was the most challenging aspect of writing this poem, and what was the most rewarding?

I don’t believe I encountered any specific challenges because this is, in its own way, simply me narrating my story. What has been most rewarding are the times I performed the poem in front of an audience that looked just like me, and they came up to me afterward to say they felt seen in my words.

They could relate to what I was saying, and in that sense, I offered a voice to their stories as well. You don’t really know what someone has gone through unless they tell you. A lot of times, we do not get to have these tough conversations within our communities. We need tools such as the arts, cinematography, or poetry to unfold the human spirit. 

7. How does your upcoming poetry collection reflect the journey of reclaiming and redefining identity in the modern world?

My poetry collection is written through the lens of a child. Its innocence, purity of  understanding, and the lack thereof are  imbued in every page. Contrary to what people might think, that child is not me. My story doesn’t begin with me; it begins with my mother and her life-changing journey outside her homeland, which brought her to Central Europe. Once she obtained European nationality, my story truly began. Coming to this realization and achieving self-acceptance will take more than a book. It is a driving force within us that some might call fate, destiny, or purpose.

The real journey begins, just as it did for my mother, when you act upon that unexplainable force and trade what you’ve known for something new. But nothing is really lost, is it? If anything, it is just enhanced, amplified, and renewed.  My mother is still the child she was at 16 years old—that child will always be within her. It has simply  been revived through me and her other children. Whatever we leave on this earth—whether it is a poetry collection or a Congolese dish—will always carry a trace of her. 

8. Do you see poetry as a form of decolonization? If so, how?

To determine whether poetry acts as a form of decolonization is a question that must  be answered by the reader. I believe that poetry can serve as a vessel, but the real work begins within. It is our duty as individuals to decolonize ourselves from the Western perspective of our livelihood. What is writing, at its core? It serves to inform one generation for the next. Yet, we all know by now that history is written by the winners. We must actively seek the truth within the cracks and learn to detect it among a sea of lies. And believe me when I say there are many of them. That’s how I see poetry. 

9. In your collection, you write about “scramblers” trying to separate nations and borders. How do you perceive the role of artificial borders in shaping modern Africa?

That’s a very difficult question. Do I love that my family and I identify as Congolese, even though, on my father’s side, we most likely derive from the coast of Zanzibar, and on my mother’s side, they probably had little  connection to the Kingdom of Kongo? Yes and no. My stance comes more from  curiosity. What would we have identified as? What would  Africa look like today if  not for  the Berlin Conference?

Still, I can’t deny, like everybody else, that I love my country, and I love the African continent as I know it to be. If a flower can grow from concrete, beautiful things can emerge from  terrible times. What matters is where we choose to go from here, and I believe pan-Africanism and pride in our people are the best way forward. We can’t go back in time or  capture what has been lost, but we can create a better tomorrow.  

10. What do you hope readers take away from reading your poem collection?

My hope is to showcase the beauty, struggle, and resilience of African people through a Congolese tale. This  could be a call to action or simply a  shift in how they see the world. That feeling might translate into an urge to write their own story, or they might leave the book on their bookshelf and let it receive dust. Regardless of  the outcome, I believe anyone who encounters this work  will become a fuller person as a result of the experience.

Interviews, VOL. 2

The Emotive Verse: Joemario Umana on Influences, Process, and the Exploration of Masculinity

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Joemario Umana is one of the rising voices in contemporary Nigerian poetry. Hailing from Maiduguri, Umana’s work explores the intricacies of identity, vulnerability, and the interaction between the physical and the emotive poetic realms. Umana is a SprinNG fellow, member of The Writers Manger Network and Poetic Nest, and author of the poetry gazelle A Flower Is Not The Only Thing That’s Fragile published by Konya Shamsrumi. His works have found homes in esteemed journals such as Akpata Magazine, Brittle Paper, Strange Horizons, and Isele Magazine, among others. In this interview, Umana delves into his creative process, discussing the influences that shape his writing, the importance of sensory experience, and his exploration of masculinity beyond traditional confines. He offers a compelling glimpse into the mind of a poet dedicated to crafting work that is both deeply personal and universally resonant.

What poets or writers have most influenced your style, and how have they shaped your approach to themes like grief, love, and identity?

When it comes to writers that have influenced my writing style, the list is quite endless and ever-updated. I am one that doesn’t really limit myself to a certain writer(s) and works. But for the sake of giving a list, I will say writers like Divine Inyang Titus, Michael Imossan, Inua Ellams, Rudy Francisco, Shane Koyczan, Ocean Vuong, and Jericho Brown have a great influence over me. Lately, Safia Elhillo, Theresa Lola, Caleb Femi, and Warsan Shire are joining that list. Vuong’s focus on the body, Rudy’s on masculinity, especially in his collection and Brown’s blending of vulnerability and masculinity resonate with me. Divine is also very great at employing vulnerability in his work, expression, and everything, and it’s something I’ve very much tried to emulate in my own style. These writers have shown me to speak openly about grief, love and identity in ways that feel both raw and
poetic. I recommend you read Michael Imossan’s “For the love of country and memory.”

There’s a strong presence of religious guilt in “How I Tell My Body I Love You,” as well as the poems in your poetry gazelle. How does your experience with religion shape your writing, particularly when addressing topics like sexuality?

My relationship with religion is complex. I don’t really love engaging in topics about it. But with reference to my poem in Akpata Magazine, the guilt mirrors my own experiences, grappling with my faith and the messages I receive about sexuality. Writing about this allows me to process and interrogate those feelings, using poetry as a way to navigate between reverence and self-acceptance.

How important is sensory experience to your creative process, and do you consciously weave it into your work to evoke deeper emotion?

Sensory experience is crucial; I believe poetry should be felt as much as understood. I consciously embed tactile and sensory details—like “crawls across my skin” or “slippery like okra’s draw”—to ground abstract emotions in the physical world, making them more visceral for the reader.

The metaphors of “a flesh quake” and “an exodus of self” in How I Tell My Body I Love You suggest an intense emotional and physical release. How important is the connection between body and emotion in your poetry?

Can I start out by asking, What is poetry without emotions? For me, emotions are often inseparable from physical sensations. The body’s reactions—“a flesh quake” or “an exodus of self”—are central because they convey the intensity of emotion in a way words alone might not. I try to capture that unity of physical and emotional release to explore vulnerability.

What is your usual starting point when writing a poem—do you begin with an image, a feeling, or a specific line?

It varies depending on the subject I’m exploring or how the poem comes to me. But basically, I start with a feeling, an image, and a specific line to open up the poem. In that order

How do you know when a poem is finished?

Is a poem ever finished? I don’t think so. You may reach a point where you feel there’s nothing more to say, like the end of a conversation. But sometimes, revisiting a poem sparks a new surge of inspiration.

Do you ever experience writer’s block? If so, how do you overcome it, and what advice would you give to others struggling with it?

I have a friend who said that writer’s block doesn’t exist. It’s just a writer’s excuse not to create bad works or to be lazy about creating. I agreed with him on this to a certain level. Personally, now, I’ll say, writer’s block happens. But I’ve found that taking breaks, reading other poets, or shifting to other forms of art helps, like seeing a movie, listening to music, engaging in conversations, observing, etc. Sometimes the best way through it is to give myself permission to write badly, letting go of
perfectionism to rediscover flow.

What poets or writers do you turn to for inspiration when you’re stuck or looking to refine your craft?

When I’m stuck, I read poets. The works of the poets I mentioned earlier remind me of the different ways poetry can stretch language and emotion, and sometimes reading them sparks new ideas or rekindles my passion for the craft.

How do you approach the editing process—do you work on a poem for long periods or prefer quick, instinctive revisions?

My editing process is a mix. I might sit with a poem for days or weeks, gradually refining it, but I also believe in instinctive revisions. Sometimes the first draft holds an energy that I don’t want to lose, so I try not to overedit.

Much of your work, particularly in your poetry pamphlet, A Flower is Not the Only Thing That’s Fragile, explores themes of masculinity. How do you use poetry to challenge or express traditional notions of masculinity in your writing?

Masculinity in my writing is about confronting expectations and stereotypes. I use poetry to challenge traditional notions and to show that masculinity can include softness, vulnerability, and fear. I hope my work encourages readers to consider masculinity as a complex and evolving experience rather than a fixed identity.

Interviews, VOL. 2

Sympatheia and the Poetic Archive of Human Experience —Abu Bakr Sadiq

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Abu Bakr Sadiq is the author of Leaked Footages (University of Nebraska Press, 2024), which won the 2023 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poetry. “Leaked Footages” is a profound meditation on loss, memory, and the search for meaning in a world grappling with uncertainty. Through his powerful verse, Sadiq explores themes of trauma, displacement, violence, and other aspects of the human experience. In this interview, Sadiq, among other things, shares how he uses poetry to confront these challenging issues, his reflections on the role of time and memory in his work, and insights into his unique writing style, which seamlessly blends traditional forms with speculative sensibilities.

What inspired you to write your collection, Leaked Footages?

Leaked Footages was born out of the need to document the experiences and lives of the people I call my own and those whose existing realities mirrored life in the way I had grown to know it. In hindsight, that need had been inside me for long and the whole time, I never felt for once that I was prepared to write the book. Prior to the commencement of drafting the poems, I lived with a great sense of inadequacy whenever I thought about what it would take to pull the poems from my head and put them on the page without coming up short. This, I think, was because I already had a faint picture of what I thought the collection was demanding to be seen as, even before I drafted the first poem.

It took more than just inspiration to even decide to put the manuscript together because I think the book came out rather out of necessity. It was as if the poems were a pile of pills stuck in my throat. The only way out was for me to either swallow them all or throw them up- I chose the latter and that was what came out. I didn’t know for certain that Leaked Footages would be “my collection.” All I did was surrender to the voice inside and make myself a vessel for it to say whatever it wanted to say. I needed to write those poems to bring to rest a storm-like feeling inside me. It was my way of understanding and contending with the experiences I was navigating at that time.

Leaked Footages reflect a profound sense of loss—loss of loved ones, homes, and histories. How do you see poetry helping you (or others) reclaim or reconstruct these losses, if at all?

One of the things I hope to achieve with my writing is to explore how poetry can serve as a bridge between the past, present, and future. Essentially, this sets me on a journey of documenting my own life’s navigation while simultaenously imagining what our realities might look like in the future. There are several creative mediums that I could achieve this with but I’m more than grateful to begin this journey using poetry. I’m fascinated by the power of poetic language to hold time to a standstill in what is, sometimes, only a few lines. It feels magical to me. That magic was what I sought to explore with the poems in Leaked Footages.

Poetry allows us to capture different aspects of our experiences- love, loss, identity, grief, childhood, and more—on the page. By writing what you’ve lost, you are, in a sense, immortalising it. Whether it be a person, a feeling, a house, a country, or parts of yourself that you can’t even name, you are giving it a new form of life. It becomes something that will probably live forever—not just in your mind but also in the minds of every reader who comes across it. Writing about it gives a new life to your memory. You sow the contents of this new memory in the minds of readers, wherever they may be. Your poem becomes a mnemonic—a point of contact for readers who resonate with your story. It reduces the chances of what you’ve lost being forgotten. That is why the documentation of these narratives is important to me.

In a broader sense, our experiences as humans are very similar. Sympatheia, a concept in stoicism, refers to the idea that all things in the universe are interconnected. That we, as humans, are not isolated entities but part of a larger cosmic web where every action, thought, and decision ripples outward, affecting others positively or negatively. Bearing this in mind, I think that each time we write poems about those things we’ve lost or any of our experience at all, the poems become mirrors for not just ourselves but for people to whom these experiences are not alien, to see themselves in a light they may not have had the courage to do if they were to write about these experiences themselves.

If, as people, our lives are not fundamentally different from each other, perhaps we feel distinct because of differences in geography, culture, tradition, language, or colour. However, the things we go through as human beings are more or less the same. Everyone experiences loss at least once in their lifetimes. It could be a loss of self, language, loved ones, hair, country, home, limb, history, or faith. The act of contemplating these losses or experiences through poetry positions it as an archive for preserving our interconnected human experiences.

In Post-Massacre Psych Evaluation, you speak to the effects of trauma in a brutally honest way. What role do you think poetry can play in addressing or processing collective trauma, especially in regions affected by conflict?

I wrote this poem largely in response to the shooting of protesters at Lekki Toll Gate during the EndSarz protest in 2020. As is usually the case with most of the poems I write, it was my way of processing that horrific event. Using poetry as a medium for documentation and archiving also serves to create awareness about our realities and current circumstances.

I think that by writing about how larger societal issues affect us personally or about how you see the world, you, as a poet, addres collective experiences—traumatic or not—because we humans are a complex entity and our experiences are similar.

With technology, the world is becoming smaller and smaller. It’s easy to connect and build relationships with people who are thousands of miles away from you without necessarily ever being together physically. In that connection, it is possible to exchange cultures, traditions, languages, art, poetry, etcetera. If we recognize that the world is continually evolving and bringing us to a point where these exchanges can happen, then poetry could help us to not only contend with our realities but also seek solutions outside of where we call home.

In recent years, Dominique Christina’s “Anarcha Speaks,” Ilya Kaminsky’s “Deaf Republic,” and Fady Joudah’s “[…]: Poems,” among many other works of poetry, are some excellent examples of poetry being used to address both generational and collective trauma. These poetry collections have had a great impact in fostering conversations about the various societal issues they addressed.

For some of us, the only way to process issues like this is by writing about them. For some readers, the literature about these issues is where they find solace. The knowledge that someone sees what you are going through, that your suffering is worth writing about and worthy of being immortalized on a page, sometimes, is enough for some of us. Ultimately, engaging in writing poems that address these societal issues is with the hopes of seeing how we can make our world a better place because poetry is a craft that has the power to help us become better at relating with one another as human beings.

Your use of time in the collection, particularly in Wormhole, is both linear and cyclical, almost like it’s collapsing in on itself. Could you speak to your relationship with time and memory in your poetry?

I think the way time or the idea of it is portrayed in the collection is an aftereffect of all the years of experiencing people, places, and stories that are way older than me in various mediums, forms, and circumstances. I grew up in a family where storytelling was an essential part of our daily lives. We used to have nights where adults and kids exchanged stories of events that occurred across different times.

Adults usually shared stories about times and events that had happened before they were born. According to them, these same stories were passed down to them by older members of the family who came before them. Essentially, the occurrences in specific periods of time in our history were being transmitted from one generation to another. My sisters are some of the best storytellers I know. They have a unique ability of telling stories in a way that literally unfolds the event embedded in their stories right before my eyes.

Coming from a tribe where traditional practices allowed individuals to have their lives spiritually tied to the lives of animals, if I close my eyes long enough, I can imagine my grandfather in the body of a crocodile. It makes me think about what he would be like as a crocodile. These stories and the images they come with are etched deep in my memory and hence, they easily come back to life when I write.

Growing up, I’d always been fascinated by science. Some of the most interesting aspects of science that I love are related to space and time. I have loved the idea of parallel universes, time travel, general relativity, cosmic bodies, etcetera. Time, particularly, is a phenomenon that I love to experiment with in my poetry. I love to think that a lot of history, which is tied to time, could be learnt through poetry. In my poetry, I try to see the many ways in which I could use different markers of time in the past, present, and future to amplify our experiences as a people. Time serves as a portal for me to explore the innumerable possibilities of existing as a different person; to explore our collective otherness, even if only imaginative.

I noticed philosophical and existential elements of fate and faith in your work, particularly in Maqtoob. How do these ideas inform your writing?

It is hard to separate my Islamic beliefs or my life as a Muslim from my writing. I was born into a Muslim family and growing up, one of the earliest lessons I learnt was that the fate of every creature in the universe is already written, which is essentially what the poem Maqtoob explores.

My outlook on life is heavily influenced by my father. He was an instructor and of course, he had a myriad of ideological beliefs about what it meant to be a person in the world. In a sense, we were like best friends who discussed everything and in between those discussions, I was fed mouthfuls of philosophies. Being close friends with my dad meant I was also close friends with his friends, who also had their own distinct philosophical beliefs about the world and our existence in it.

They were very generous in sharing these ideologies with me. I saw them as fathers in the same way they thought of me as a son. These exchanges shaped my mind and made me see life the way I do today. It’s only natural that bits of the philosophies and ideologies that have shaped who I am today as a person sneak into my poetry.

How important are sound and rhythm in your writing process? Do you ever read your poems aloud while working on them?

All the time. When I began writing poetry, the only way my poems reached an audience was through performance. The process of crafting my poems for stage performances, as you would expect, meant I had to recite them multiple times to myself. That habit has proven indispensable now that most of my poetry is housed in pages. It is impossible for me to write a poem without reading it aloud. That is how I get to know if any part of the poem isn’t working; it is how I observe the progression and flow to know if they are working in tandem to ensure harmony in the poem.

Reading it out loud feels like I’m touching a soul-like part of the poem that I might not otherwise be able to access. Beyond form and structural aesthetics, I desire for my poetry to have a sonic appeal. I always want to get a sense that I have made the right word choices. If the poem doesn’t sound half as good as it appears on the page, then there’s more work to be done. I’m always mindful of rhythm and the psychological effects of sound when I write. What you hear, you feel, just like music.

What does your typical writing process look like? Do you have any specific rituals or practices that help you access your creativity?

I don’t have a typical writing practice. My writing process is very fluid and dynamic. However, I have noticed some sort of pattern over the years. I usually begin enjoying the creative works of others. It could be hours or days spent watching documentaries, battle rap, reading literary works, and other art mediums. Exposing myself to these works gets my creative juices flowing.

While I do enjoy writing in the quiet of my room, I do a lot of writing outdoors, too. This includes basketball courts, barbershops, cafes, or just anywhere I can feel connected to the work I’m creating and the environment at the same time. I love writing with background noise as it helps me to stay focused. I enjoy writing with music as well.

When you’re working on a poem, how do you know when it’s finished?

I never do. The crafting of a poem is a never-ending process for me. I don’t think I ever get to know, with certainty, when my poem is finished. Oftentimes, not even journal and magazine publications bring an end to this crafting process. There is always a phrase or two to move around, a better point to place a line break, a better image to express an idea, or language to tighten.

I love to think that poems, or poetry in general, should be an experience. The more I feel I have managed to create an experience with a poem, the closer I feel to not wanting to touch it any further. This experience could take a day or years to create. Also, the feedback I get from my friends helps me know if a poem is anywhere close to feeling like an experience.

Your poetry seems to merge elements of both traditional and futuristic or speculative writing, almost as if it’s grounded in reality while imagining new worlds. For example, your references to drones and cyborgs. What inspired this?

I think this element of my poetry is mostly informed by my upbringing as a child. I grew up with an immense fascination for science and the mechanics of various entities of the universe. So much that when I began writing, all of the things I had consumed and lived as a lover of science streamed almost effortlessly into my writing. It is imperative to note that this juxtaposition or incorporation of scientific ideas into my writing didn’t happen immediately after I began writing. There was so much I didn’t know about the craft of writing. I didn’t even know of the many ways writing poetry could be experimental until after a close reading of the works of Layli Long Soldier, Kaveh Akbar, Franny Choi, and Jenny Xie.

Observing what they were doing with structure, technique, and execution was an eye opener. I also spent a lot of time studying the poetry publications by Strange Horizons, Uncanny Magazine, and Fantasy Magazine, amongst many others, where I fell in love with the speculative approach of writing poems. That endeavour exposed me to the endless possibilities abound in experimentation with poetry and language. Before my encounter with experimental poetry, I had consumed a great amount of poetry written in traditional forms. Perhaps this is why I’m able to bring all of these elements into my own poetry today.

What poets shaped your writing?

There are so many poems who have kept the door open for my writing to become what it is today. Michael Rage Imona, Chuka Lotanna, and Fayomi Olumide were the people who formally introduced me to poetry. Michael and I used to challenge ourselves to write a poem every day. He built my commitment to the craft of writing and helped me develop a passion for it.

In 2019, Kaveh Akbar was so kind to send me his collection “Calling a Wolf a Wolf,” and I read it like my life depended on it. Reading his collection was a pivotal moment that orchestrated the trajectory my poetry would take in the months that followed.

Back in 2020, Alycia Pirmohammed offered me feedback on a poem in a way that opened my mind to the mechanics and movement of language on the page in a way that I hadn’t seen before. She seemed to have understood the needs of my poem and poetry better than I did. Her feedback on my poem had in it lessons that I still go back to to this day.

In 2020, I participated in a masterclass facilitated by Aremu Adebisi, which he called Transcendence. Members of the Unserious Collective (Pamilerin Jacob, Nome Emeka Patrick, etc.) were some of the tutors. They were so generous to share insightful ideas about writing and approach, which I carry with me into every poem I write. Aremu Adebisi, through his poetry and Transcendence Masterclass, was instrumental to my engagement with poetics of faith and identity. He also introduced me to a larger community of poets, most of whom are now close friends of mine.

Mayowa Oyewale and Martins Deep, unknowingly, through hours of phone conversations, voice notes, and emails, taught me about my own poetry that I couldn’t have learnt anywhere else. My family at The Deadliners have taught me so much about writing poetry, navigating the publishing industry, and existing as a poet.

My poetry has greatly been influenced by the works of several other poets, including Ilya Kaminsky, Franny Choi, Safia Elhillo, Nome Emeka Patrick, Carolyn Forché, Ladan Osman, Koleka Patuma, and Claire Schwartz.

What effect do you hope Leaked Footages has on its readers?

I don’t know about what kind of effects to hope for, but if readers, on reaching the end of the collection, get anything close to the feeling of having seen a movie, a theatrical performance, or a documentary, then that will be nice.

Interviews

Comfort Omovre on Writing Healthier Love Stories

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Nigerian love stories often find themselves entangled in a familiar web of heartbreak, betrayal, and trauma. They captivate us with their raw emotion but rarely offer an escape, a dream, or a reason to hope. Comfort Omovre’s debut novel is a refreshing departure from this well-worn path. It is a love story that chooses healing over pain, joy over despair, and hope over cynicism. Uju and Tade are not battling each other or drowning in toxicity; they are two souls navigating the beauty and vulnerability of love. Set against the festive backdrop of Christmas, Omovre’s When Love Visits is a narrative that feels like a warm embrace, perfect for the season. It is a story about surrendering to possibilities and finding strength in connections that uplift rather than destroy.

In this interview, Nwodo Divine speaks with Comfort Omovre about her inspiration, her mission to redefine Nigerian romance, and why her novel is one to cherish this Christmas season.

  1. Love in literature can reveal as much about the times as it does about the characters. How does your novel speak to modern relationships, and are there any cultural or social issues you felt compelled to address?

If my novel speaks to modern relationships, I believe it primarily challenges the status quo. Because of the work I do as a counsellor who also runs an online brand geared towards helping people build healthier relationships, I’m constantly privy to the intricacies of modern-day relationships across social classes, ages, and ethnic groups. One thing I’ve come to realize is that a lot of relationships these days are gravely unhealthy.

However, because that seems to be the norm—what is commonly obtainable—people have begun to believe that perhaps that’s just how it’s meant to be. If anything, I wrote this novel to show people that love and relationships can be better than and different from what they’re used to. I wanted to exhibit what was possible in an ideal relationship and how the people involved could both thrive in their love if they chose to do it the right way. My utmost hope was that, more than seeing what was possible, people would try to emulate this in their various relationships as well, optimistically leading to the birth of new, more wholesome, real-life love stories.

As for cultural or social issues, I’d say there were about two I wished to briefly touch on: domestic violence and the concept of waiting to have kids long after marriage. As someone who’s made the latter decision herself and knows others who have, I’m well aware of the opposition and presumptions we often face. With my book, I wanted to reiterate that waiting to become a parent until one feels ready is completely fine and, in fact, something that should be celebrated in our society.

Most of all, I also wanted to, if only subtly, convey the message that being hit even once by your partner is more than enough “times” to make you walk away. That families of victims have a role to play in ensuring that their daughters can safely escape their abusers and rebuild beautiful lives for themselves.

  1. Readers often look for something to take away from a love story. What do you hope readers feel or learn by the time they close the final page of your book?

That love can be soft, wholesome, and easy—not in a way that doesn’t require any work, but in the way that doesn’t feel like a struggle you must wake up and fight through every other day of your life, with only glimpses of joy in between. I wanted my readers to leave their reading experiences with these facts: that effective communication, willingness to be vulnerable, transparency, and honest intentions are often the foundational pillars of any successful relationship. I wanted them to have their hope restored for the idea of finding love again, even after being hurt, and most importantly, to encourage them to embark on their healing journeys without waiting on a new love to suddenly ‘fix’ everything for them. 

  1. Many readers have expressed their pleasure with the emotional depth of the dialogues between your main characters. How did you approach crafting the conversations between your protagonists to capture their chemistry and emotional journey?

Ans: Personally, I’m a huge fan of dialogue. Even whilst reading, I find myself skimming past narrations so I can get right to the dialogue, as I believe they do more in succinctly portraying the personalities of characters as well as the dynamic across various relationships. So, for this book, I wanted the dialogues to feel as real and natural as possible, like an interaction that you’d typically witness, or even partake in yourself, in real life. Hence, I immersed myself in each character, my understanding of their persons, as well as their relational ties across board, and I kept asking myself, “What would someone like this character typically say in real life?” What action seems most natural to accompany these words?” I suppose that really worked well, and I’m glad that my readers were able to see and appreciate it too. Although I have heard from a lot of editors in my ghostwriting years that my dialogues are often their favourite parts of my books, so I suppose there is also a possibility that it’s just a natural flair I have. 

  1. Which actors or actresses do you envision as the leads in a film adaptation of your novel, and why?

To be honest, I’d choose Nancy Isime for the role of Uju. I must admit that it’s more of a personal bias. I adore Nancy and I’m a fan of most of her works, if not all. For me, seeing her play Uju would be a dream come true. There’s also the fact that when it comes to physique, I may or may not have taken a cue from Nancy’s looks. Aside from my bias and the similarities in physique, though, I think Nancy is a brilliant actress who would carry Uju’s character well. As for the male lead, to be quite honest, I’m still a little undecided. I’d say Shamz Garuba definitely fits the physique I imagined for Tade, but a lot of readers have been voting Ayoola Ayolola when it comes to charisma, and I cannot argue against that.  I too think he’s such a charming actor, and Tade, if anything at all, is well known for his charms. So, there you have it.

  1. The endings in romance novels are often eagerly anticipated. Without spoilers, what kind of ending did you feel was necessary for this love story?

A happy ever after ending, of course! It’s such a beautiful love story. Honestly, I think there was only one way it could have ended—the way it did!

  1. Many writers have a specific routine or ritual that gets them “in the zone.” What does your writing routine look like?

Ans: I wouldn’t say I have any ritual per se. I do know, though, that I love to write straight out of sleep. Whenever I’m in the middle of developing a story, especially with a countdown ticking, I do this thing where I just shut out the rest of the world and focus only on writing. I turn off notifications, block off my calendars, take a break from my business, and I even forget to eat a lot of times (I know, I know). It’s like I become a wordsmithing zombie. I just wake up, brush my teeth, drink some water, go to my desk, and start typing away. That is, until my stomach begins to gnaw at my insides or my husband forces me to prioritize myself. All in all, I’d say one thing I always do is sleep before writing. I suffer from brain fogs a lot, and I’ve found that a little nap or a long sleep helps clear my head enough for the creative juices to flow uninterruptedly. 

7. How do you handle critiques on your work, and has reader feedback ever shifted your approach to writing romance?

As for critiques, people always look at me amusingly when I say I welcome every single one. Even the ones that were delivered harshly, rudely, or weren’t even critiques at all, just straight up bashing. I would say that my years as a ghostwriter have significantly contributed to my ability to do this. For that duration, I worked with multiple publishing presses across the globe, all of which had a myriad of editors who often never ran out of “feedback” to give. Some were kind and considerate; others didn’t care to wrap their words in flowers.

The feedback that fell into the latter category at the start used to sting and make me feel awful about myself as a writer. However, I soon realized one thing: that after my sulking, when I eventually tied on my big girl shoes and put all their corrections to work, the project often turned out so much better. Even more so, taking their feedback as pointers and applying them subsequently to my writing only made me a better writer overall. So, I learnt to be grateful for and even began to look forward to critiques of my writing, as I now saw them as one major way to grow as an artist.

Despite having quit ghostwriting two years ago, this is a disposition I continue to have and hope to carry through my years as an author. I just want every new work to be better than my last, and as such, I’d always be open to critiques—even though there’s no denying that sometimes they do still sting (hehe). But that’s to be expected, I suppose. After all, I am only human. Regarding whether feedback has ever influenced my approach to writing romance, I would say it has, to some extent. However, feedback has never fundamentally altered the core of my work as an artist. I want to be an author that stands out in the way she writes romance stories and the relational dynamics she portrays between characters, and that wouldn’t happen if I let myself be turned and tossed by every gust of wind. A little bit contradictory, I understand. But many times, life is all about checks and balances, isn’t it?

  1. Have you experienced “writer’s block” on your journey? If so, how did you overcome it, and did that experience teach you anything about your process or style?

I wouldn’t call them writer’s block per se, they’re more like creative fatigue. Then again, I suppose it happens differently for every writer.  During this time, I simply let myself rest and focus on consuming other kinds of art—movies, animations, and books. Give it a few days, and I’m often ready to get back into the “zone,” with enough rest and stimulation (inspiration).

  1. What’s a lesson from this novel-writing journey that you wish you’d known when you first started writing?

That writing and self-publishing a book was the hardest thing I was ever going to do, and that I was going to take so many wrong turns before finally getting to my desired destination. I wish I’d been aware of all the wrong turns ahead of time so I could have avoided them. Nonetheless, I’m grateful for the experience and all the hard-learnt lessons. At least now I know so much better.

  1. Are there any particular authors or books that inspired or influenced your approach to writing romance?

Ans: To be quite honest, right now, I can’t think of any author that has influenced my approach to writing romance. That’s because I’m very deliberate about the way I choose to write romance stories. But if you’re asking if I’ve been inspired by any romance authors in general, the answer is yes—countless. My favourites are Debbie Macomber, Nora Roberts, Christina Lauren, Chief Chimamanda Adichie, and Elizabeth Lowell. 

  1. What advice would you give to aspiring writers who are just beginning their journey?

Whatever your dreams are, they’re entirely valid. Never stop writing and sharing your work. Ask questions if necessary. Get in touch with authors and form genuine connections; attend workshops if you can. Join an active community and participate. Overall, keep writing every single day if you can, and never stop reading. As long as you remain on the journey, taking steps towards your goal each day, one of those days you’ll look up and realize that you’re already living your dreams. I’m rooting for you! You’ve got this!

Featured, Interviews

Writing, Identity, and Staying True to Your Craft – Chika Unigwe

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Chika Unigwe is a Nigerian-born author and professor known for her powerful storytelling, especially on themes of migration, identity, and resilience. Her works, including On Black Sisters’ Street and The Middle Daughter, explore complex human experiences through African and immigrant perspectives. Unigwe’s writing is inspired by her personal journey from Nigeria to Belgium, where she began her literary career, and by her encounters with influential African writers like Flora Nwapa, Cyprian Ekwensi, and Buchi Emecheta.

In this interview, she shares insights into her writing journey, her thoughts on diverse narratives in African literature, and the significance of resistance as a defining trait of her characters.

  1. What inspired you to begin writing, and how did your journey as a writer start? 
  • I have always loved reading, and a natural extension of that passion was that, for as long as I can remember, I have also been writing. My journey began as a young girl, crafting one-paragraph stories and poems in an old journal my parents gave me, and receiving their loving praise for everything I wrote. They later sponsored the publication of a poetry collection I wrote as an undergraduate. However, my entry into traditional publishing truly began after I moved to Belgium. I entered a short story contest for young, unpublished writers, and my story was one of the ten winners. A publisher reached out, asking if I had a novel they could consider, so I wrote one. That novel became the first work of fiction published in the country in Dutch by a (naturalized) Belgian of African origin.
  1. Which authors or books have most influenced your writing? 
  • My earliest influences—in the sense that they showed me it was possible to be a writer—were Flora Nwapa, Cyprian Ekwensi, and Buchi Emecheta. Flora Nwapa’s daughter was my classmate in elementary school, and she was the first writer I ever saw in person. Cyprian Ekwensi’s sons were friends with two of my older siblings, and they brought us his books. I first encountered Buchi Emecheta as a child in a documentary about her life. These three writers showed me that writers were flesh-and-blood humans who lived normal lives like my parents. This was important, because growing up middle-class at the time I did, there was a preponderance of books by British and American authors. Enid Blyton was a huge favorite. While I enjoyed The Famous Five, Noddy, and the magical worlds Blyton created, and even mimicked them in my earliest writings, without being in proximity to these Nigerian writers, I might have thought writing was something only people in the West pursued as a career.
  1. What has been the most rewarding aspect of your writing career so far?
  • The most rewarding aspect of my writing career has been hearing from readers who found that a particular book or story resonated with them deeply, offered comfort, or moved them in a meaningful way.
  1. On Black Sisters’ Street addresses the lives of African sex workers in Europe. What inspired you to write about this topic, and how did you approach the sensitivity of the subject?
  • When I moved to Belgium, I was shocked to learn that there were Nigerian sex workers in the country. My curiosity drove me to explore the topic, and the only way I could approach it responsibly was through research. I spoke to women with experiences similar to those of my characters, and I walked the same streets they did. When writing Sisi’s first day on the cobbled streets, I drew from my own sense of vulnerability—even though I knew I wouldn’t be sleeping with anyone, could go home whenever I wanted, and had my husband nearby. Sisi’s vulnerability was my own. Above all, I saw the women I spoke to, like those in my novel, as human beings and fellow women.
  1. Was there any character you got attached to in writing the novel, and if so who, and why did you feel such for that character?
  • When I write, I have to fully inhabit every character, even those I don’t particularly like; otherwise, I couldn’t write them truthfully. Readers can sense when a writer is taking sides because the favoured character either lacks flaws or redeeming qualities. A protagonist who is one-dimensional in either direction isn’t compelling. As writers, we must trust our readers to root for the “right” characters on their own terms.
  1. Your works often shift between multiple voices, times, and perspectives. What draws you to this narrative structure, and how do you manage the distinctiveness of each voice.   
  • I love the challenge of creating distinct voices, shifting times, and perspectives within the same narrative. This structure also reflects  our world. Narrators who see things differently add layers of complexity and authenticity, allowing readers to draw their own informed conclusions, regardless of what any particular narrator thinks or believes. To keep characters distinct, I use different techniques such as varying tense, speech patterns, and references. For instance, Joyce in On Black Sisters Street is preoccupied with dust, and attentive readers will understand why. In The Middle Daughter, Ugo’s passages are in the present tense, and because she enjoys Afrobeat, there are frequent references to it. Udodi, who serves as a chorus, has a voice that is both wise and contemporary; she uses proverbs, tells the Igbo origin story, and says things like, “a story is like a coconut.” Ephraim, who has an inflated sense of righteousness and insecurity, speaks in a verbose, self-righteous tone that highlights his religiosity. Nani’s language also shifts as she grows and evolves.
  1. African immigrants stories are central to your work. What do you think is often misunderstood or oversimplified in mainstream depictions of the African diaspora, and how do you challenge these perceptions?
  • If by “mainstream” you mean dominant narratives about the African diaspora created by those outside the group, then I would say this: the misconception that we are a monolithic group. I challenge this perception by exploring and portraying the many diverse ways in which we live and experience the world. And my depictions are by no means exhaustive.
  1. Many of your female protagonists exist in spaces of resistance—against societal norms, gender expectations, or personal trauma. How do you see resistance as a form of identity construction in your characters, and what does it say about their sense of self?
  • They exist in those spaces because of the status quo. I am drawn to narratives of people at the margins—both men and women. Raised Catholic and still practicing, I think that influence shapes my literary imagination by making me particularly sensitive to stories of those who exist outside the center, to imbalances of power, and to injustices. As a result, my protagonists often occupy spaces where, to be compelling, they must act against forces of oppression in whatever form those forces take. Resistance defines them; without it, they would lack agency. And what is a protagonist without agency? Like a bicycle without wheels, they might retain the form, but they cannot truly function.
  1. Do you engage in any activities outside of writing that specifically help to unlock creative blocks or inspire new ideas for your work?
  • I am a professor of creative writing
  1. What advice would you give to young writers, particularly those from Africa, looking to break into the global literary scene? 
  • Stay true to yourself and write the stories that matter to you. Don’t be swayed by trends or by what you think the “West” wants to read. Be persistent: enter competitions, submit your work to reputable journals both within and beyond the continent, and keep reading widely.
Interviews, Weekly Features

Memory, Perspective, and the Creative Nonfiction Writer – Abasi-maenyin Esebre

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Abasi-maenyin Esebre

In this interview, we delve into Esebre’s thoughts on memory, perspective, and the responsibilities of a nonfiction writer. How does a writer draw the line between fact and feeling? How do personal memories influence the stories we tell? These are the questions that guide our conversation with this.

Abasi-maenyin Esebre is an Oron storyteller who centres Calabar in his writings. His essay, Grief: Its Invisible Gerund, was shortlisted for the continental non-fiction competition organised by Agbowo Magazine and won the 2023 SEVHAGE PRIZE for non-fiction. His essay, Call Me By My Name, has been published in AFREADA.

  1. How do you balance truth with storytelling in creative nonfiction, especially when memory or perspective may distort events?

Every essay begins with a premise, not a memory. Sure, an unwanted emotion (a stowaway envy or a repressed event from childhood that demands immediate attention) often bobs to the surface and represents a trapdoor into the past. But the emotion, the image, the entire recollection doesn’t warrant an essay until I can hammer its urgent suggestiveness into a strong premise that then acts as the narrative node from which the story, the insight, and the reckoning branches into.

Any other way makes the entire enterprise needlessly nebulous. Since memories are endless, to wring out truth from the past, I borrow a small principle from photography and frame by exclusion, rather than inclusion. I graft a fraction of the past, excluding everything else to achieve truth by omission, which I then churn into a premise: it’s easier to be brave than courageous; grief is endless; depression is a life-long neighbour; or: art will save you. 

History and memory are full of omissions. Thus, the essay form demands a mastery of negative space, of silence as much as speech, of things remembered and others rightfully, and artfully forgotten, i.e., excluded. Once I’ve successfully worked out the premise from the memory, once I’ve achieved truth by omission, I extract the silk from the worm: I explore the premise in relation to my past through storytelling, working the narrative through events from my life, historical parallels, other essays, poems, and sometimes conducting a philosophical analysis, a moral vivisection of the reanimated reminisce.

Even though perspective presupposes bias, a tendency towards chauvinism, a good essayist treats their idea, the binding logic in their premise, like a punching bag, testing its various weakness so the critic’s assails will land like a stick to a piñata, unveiling the sweetness beneath the rigor. However, we, both readers and writers of essays, must keep in mind also that memory is rarely ever a remembrance of the past but rather a remembrance of a remembrance, or worse, a recollection of the things we think we remember. One must respect this in-built fallibility and dust their authority on the chipped threshold before entering the sacred temple of essays. 

And, apart from cases where defamation might come into play, we must not treat essays, or creative nonfiction, as a form that loses its forte when it abandons ‘truth’. What is true about a person, an event, or a period is not always the truth—i.e. what’s factual. There are assembled truths, imagined truths. And that is what all stories often aspire towards, the expansion of reality, and not merely a factual description or one-to-one recreation. It goes without saying: realism is the most boring way to depict reality. 

I am speaking broadly here about creative nonfiction, and am in no way asking writers to deceive: passing an augmented personal narrative as fact. Ultimately, the essayist must have the fastidiousness of a journalist towards facts and the freewheeling, minutiae-to-epic imaginative stroke of a master novelist. 

  1. How do you handle writing about people from your life who might see themselves in your work? Do you prioritize their feelings, or the integrity of your narrative?

It’s not an either/or situation, rather both. In an anecdote, a person is often reduced to a persona, and in a positive story, this can be okay, but in a negative one, it can be detrimental. In a memoir or narrative that doubles as a critique of one’s self and the people involved, it is easy to turn these featured people into caricatures, just so the argument lands well.

So, I often use an initial or a moniker, or describe people from my life in a way that’s not easily recognizable, even to them. Except in the case of abuse, name-dropping can be intrusive, thus I always consult or, at the very least, inform them beforehand. For, just in the same way a photograph punishes growth, or resists change, a portrait of a close person can turn into a cage, a cage of words, which can be difficult to undo, because unlike dictionaries and textbooks, we don’t like to abridge the stories we believe to be true of other people. We punish people by treating their past as gospel and their  present as hearsay.

  1. Do you have any specific rituals or habits that help you stay productive as a writer?

I have several. I, for one, collect sentences. When I stumble across a sentence or  bouquet of prose I admire, I stow it away in a notebook, archive it in a document, and recite it over and over until it clings to my memory. I like to believe it primes my brain into thinking a certain way, informing it of what I’m trying to achieve each time I officiate between words. 

Apart from that, I go on long, aimless walks. Something about being a flaneur gets my brain turning. Some of my best thoughts come when I’m far from home, surrounded by reeds and butterflies, the air cool enough to freeze my lungs. There’s something about open air and the hard ground beneath your feet that opens the mind to boundless speculation.

  1. How do you know when a piece is finished, especially in nonfiction where the story could keep evolving?

Once I’ve exhausted my arguments and made all the right points, when I’ve expressed myself to the hilt, or when there’s no blood left to drain from the heart of contention, I put the final full stop and call it quits. 

On a more technical level, I plot everything I write: books and buildings begin with blueprints. I select the memories that correlate with the theme, do research on the other aspects—a famous writer’s anecdote, an obscure, fun fact about a historic event etc.—and map them out with an outline, before I lay the sentences one after the other. 

I also estimate a word count for each work, a habit I suspect comes from my formative years as a content writer where I had to churn out articles to exact word counts. To do so, I broke down the sections into even more constricting word counts—50, 100, 250—before writing. While I’m not this exact when it comes to essays, I find that plotting out the landscape, taking reconnaissance, so to speak, of the idea helps me be necessarily contraceptive, so the writing stays sharp and features all the remarkable landmarks, all the mountains and volcanoes, the flowers and the dead body from which they sprout.

  1. How do you deal with writer’s block or creative fatigue? Are there strategies you use to reignite inspiration?

Reading works magic. I find writer’s block to be a problem of articulation, often in relation to the quality of the prose. When that’s the case, I read my favorite authors. But I’m really the worst person to ask this, because I rarely get writer’s block. Maybe how I set up shop is to blame. 

I allow stories to ferment for years before I write them. Anytime I’m working on a novel or an essay, chances are I’ve been talking to friends about it—testing the premise and the power of certain scenes—for at least a year or two. Once I’m convinced about the idea, I can take anywhere between a year or six to research it before the prose work begins. I plot religiously, too. As stated earlier, I plot the entire essay and the sections in-between.

It works for me, and I don’t complain. Plus, I tackle the difficult parts first (the opening sentence and final scene) months before I flesh out the body. Even at that, I don’t write chronologically; a freedom I suspect comes from first figuring out the end and the entire structure. Once that’s done, I can enter any scene, like a room, furnish it, then leave. That’s the freedom that comes with installing the foundation, the main plot points, months or years in advance: I can explore without getting lost, and that freedom also doesn’t hamper my overall ability to articulate myself. The words just come, and one can’t get missing in one’s own house.

  1. When writing essays, how do you decide when to take a reflective versus a narrative approach? Is there a guiding principle that helps you structure your work?

I often realize the essay’s form through prolonged introspection. But not always. As a rule, if the story works as gossip, then I follow the narrative path; if it works best as a sermon, then I become more reflective. If it has fantastic, incredulous elements, then I stick to narration; but if it’s an essay that burrows into a symptomatic element of pop culture or a political phenomenon, then I stick with the reflective approach. 

Sometimes, I allow the pendulum to swing to and fro by doing the Baldwin-cum-Gladwell stuff and alternate between the personal and the global, working out the myriad transitions at the point where personal memory overlaps neatly over collective history, where the individual’s needs collide violently against what society wants.

  1. Who are your biggest influences in the essay genre, and what have you learned from their work?

Eve Babitz and Elisa Gabbert. I know this should be a list populated by Baldwin, Emerson, Borges, Achebe, Theoreau, Teju Cole, Joan Didion and Susan Sontag. I’ve read them. I love them. Their works, their words, remain timeless touchstones: dizzying, disorienting peepholes into what is possible within the form and how it can tackle history, philosophical ideas, culture, politics, and the personal within a paragraph or the breath of an entire essay. All this is true. But just as I came to fantasy by way of F. Scott Fiztgerald, rather than say Sanderson, so also did I come to appreciate the essay through Eve Babitz and Elisa Gabbert, two revered and acclaimed writers who are still not as celebrated as they ought to be.

In The Most Interesting Thing, a fragmentary essay I wrote earlier this year for Restful Mag about art that moved me, I described the lesson I took from Eve Babitz as: “…the exploration of one’s city as an art of introspection into one’s self.” 

Since I am obsessed with cities (and the writers they birth: Dublin: Joyce; Anambra: Achebe; California: Didion), discovering and reading Babitz gave me license to explore Calabar, my home city, in a way I thought ludicrous when I began writing. The way she explored Los Angeles with the care of a Smithsonian intern at the Colosseum taught me to see my city as my ultimate site of artistic excavation, as my window into my country, my tribesmen, and the world at large. 

Baldwin’s treatment of Harlem during the 1950s has, more or less, immortalized the place, and Stephen King also represents this same city-creed, but I came into literature through the backdoor. My erudition has been shaped, so far, by an unorthodox, self-made curriculum. I read, and continue to read, out of order, making haphazard leaps; hence, I learnt this timeless lesson from a lesser-known oracle, that a city can become a writer’s ouija board with which they interrogate and unveil their insidious, psychological tendencies, a place from which they can make the occasional timeless, prophetic proclamations about the human condition.

As for Elisa Gabbert, what I find fascinating about her work is the same thing readers and lovers of Teju Cole find fascinating about his work—the sheer, erratic scope.

  1. How important is reading widely in the development of one’s own writing style, and are there specific types of texts you believe every essay writer should study?

A writer should read as wide as an editor and as deeply as a critic if they want to develop any style. But that’s not all: they must master the fundamentals of good prose: punctuation, grammar, rhythm, and meaning. In chess, no one can become a super grandmaster with their own unique play style—as dangerously intuitive as Fisher or sacrificially aggressive as Tal—without first studying both the fundamentals and the greats. You must know your opening theory, the middle game and end game. You must know the value of moving the rooks to the seventh rank and so on. As with chess, so it is in essays. Read the classics: Montaigne, Emerson, Baldwin, Didion, etc. And the contemporary. Read cookbooks and study arcane history. Know as much as you can, so you can meet the moral, philosophical, and narrative demands of each differing essay.

  1. What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received, and how did it influence your work?

“A writer is a professional observer.” Coming across this quote from Susan Sontag put a lot of things in perspective for me. Writing is the last phase of what a writer does. Before that, there’s the accumulation of memories and emotions, the facts of the world and the implication of history on the present or the future. Then comes observation. And with observation comes introspection, correlation, and pattern recognition. These acts combined sometimes trigger interrogation. Imperatives driven like shovels into blood-filled dirt. All of these conspire towards an insight, a eureka moment that finally warrants the putting together of words, the hunched posture in front of a glowing laptop. 

But in all this, observation is what gives prose its fragrance, its licence to truth. Details are lost in passive observation. The writer’s job is to look at the nib of a pen and think of its similarity to the roll-on and read, later, that the woman who invented the roll-on was inspired by the ball-point pen, which had been invented a few years prior. Everything I’ve written so far that’s resonated has come from careful observation. Indeed, every book worth reading contains the fossils of crucial observations.

  1. There’s a growing trend of writers exposing their deepest vulnerabilities in personal essays, but some argue this oversharing is exploitative or even counterproductive. Do you think there’s a danger of commodifying personal pain for clicks or validation?

According to this verdict, the only thing worse than a confessional poet is a confessional essayist. But there’s nothing new about turning the pockets of one’s heart inside out, inviting more witnesses. I have no reservations on this, truly: as long as the writer doesn’t abandon a thorough esthetic treatment of their pain, then they can be as confessional as a war criminal to a priest in a coma. 

The only danger I can see is when they only aim to shock alone, or if they veer too much into the mawkish, into loud, unbridled sentimentality. Other than that, every essayist is confessional—it’s only a matter of degree. Even an essay about a volcanic rock is a statement about one’s self. A writer cannot hide behind words: for words are too transparent, too thin a mesh to conceal one’s heart behind. And woe unto the vulgar writer; their fame will be their undoing.

Featured Image: Ugochukwu Emebiriodo

Interviews

In Nigeria, Writing Queer Stories Could Make Me a Target for Murder – Enit’ayanfe Akinsaya

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In a country where silence is often safer than truth, Enit’ayanfe Ayosojumi Akinsanya stands unflinchingly at the crossroads of art and danger. As a queer Nigerian writer, his decision to write stories that humanise queer people’s experiences in a society that seeks to erase them comes with a perilous cost: his very life.

Enit’ayanfe Ayosojumi Akinsanya is a Nigerian writer whose works have appeared in several reputable magazines, including Afrocritik, Brittle Paper, Fiction Niche, The Shallow Tales Review, Kalahari Review, One Black Boy Like That, African Writer, Eunoia Review, Bending Genres, Livina Press, Fiery Scribe Review, The Airgonaut, among others. He was shortlisted for the 2018 Dusty Manuscript GTB National Novel Prize, and for the 2023 Afritondo Short Story Prize. He won the 2022 Itanile International Short Story Prize and was also the First-Position in the 2022 Bicontinental Arts Lounge Contest for “The Green We Left Behind” Creative Nonfiction Climate-Change Print Anthology.

Akinsaya is also the author of “How to catch a story that doesn’t exist,” a short story collection that is set to be released at the end of 2024, in which he provides a raw and intimate tale of love, fear, and resistance, set against a backdrop of cultural repression. In this interview, we ask Akinsaya about what it means to be a storyteller in a country where queer existence is not just misunderstood but criminalized. He shares the emotional weight of living under constant threat and how his pen has become both a weapon and a shield.

Your short story collection, “How to catch a story that doesn’t exist,” deals with love, intimacy, and identity in a very profound manner. Why did you write on such themes in spite of Nigerian cultural expectations regarding love?

I wrote and published the collection because I needed to respond to what I had heard about love, intimacy, and identity in queer communities.

I was a teenager when I realised I wasn’t supposed to exist. If I did, I was expected to fit into the cultural norms. “Normal” meant having crushes on girls and wanting to explore puberty with them. I was obviously not normal, and this alone isolated me. It felt like I was being judged for everything I said, how I said it, how I walked, and what I was excited about. Often not in silence. So I turned to things I hoped would not judge me: books, films, silence, stillness, and Jesus.

These mechanisms did not help me feel less alone or afraid. They did, however, divert my attention away from the truth about myself. I didn’t see myself in any of the films I watched. They were only easy to turn to because they represented a world in which I could escape and fantasise about being something else. And silence served as a shield, while stillness became a fortress. If I didn’t speak or move, no one would notice me and say something that would instantly break my spirit.

Later, I would fall in love for the first time, meet people who were similar to me, and realise how many stories I had to tell about my own and others’ experiences. I also discovered that the stories in my heart would violently contradict what traditional Nigerian culture was said to demand in terms of love, identity, and association.

I wrote queer stories to correct lies: that being queer was immoral and unAfrican; that being queer was influenced by habits, abuse, and foreign cultures; and that being queer harmed posterity.

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I wrote queer stories to correct lies: that being queer was immoral and unAfrican; that being queer was influenced by habits, abuse, and foreign cultures; and that being queer harmed posterity.
– Adeniyi Ayosojumi Akinsanya

Nigeria has a complicated relationship with queerness that is often marked by hostility. How do you think fiction can play a role in shifting cultural perceptions and narratives around LGBTQ+ identities?

I believe Nigeria’s attitude towards queerness is both hostile and hypocritical. We are losing men, and it is not due to queerness. An arbitrary cult known as “Brotherhood” is sweeping through Nigeria, filled with men with unresolved traumas and puerile fantasies who have completely lost touch with their emotions—except for murderous rage to vent on feminine persons.

Deep down, these men are shaking shriveled shadows of themselves. They would rather become monsters than be vulnerable. That is how civilisation crumbles. That is how humans lose their humanity and turn into ferocious beasts. That is why wars, genocide, and violence exist in all aspects of society. That is why love as a language is disappearing.

Writing a story that rehumanises people is a labour of love and courage, and I believe I took a huge risk with my life when I wrote the book.

I could be found and lynched. I could be kicked out of the family. I know writers who spoke out against religious extremism and were attacked. I know queer people who were violently assaulted after coming out on television or through social media. I know celebrities who are afraid to speak out in support of human rights for fear of being called out and cancelled.

Still, does this imply that we should look away? I don’t believe so. I know social leaders and activists who have sung, spoken, marched, and protested for human society’s liberation. These people refused to give up until something positive happened. And, while it is easy to romanticise legacy or delude oneself into thinking that being a writer qualifies one as an activist, I believe that everything we say or publish is a statement of influence in the world.

How do you handle the potential backlash or criticism of writing queer stories in a country with anti-LGBTQ+ laws?

When I sent the manuscript of How to Catch a Story That Doesn’t Exist to my publishers around August 2021, my heart was pounding. It was like I was about to sail down a street full of booby traps. I received messages from strangers cursing me for promoting evil, for teaching young readers to be wayward and perverted. I was amused. I am still amused because the idea of queerness as evil is devoid of both logic and sociological proof. And about teaching, I wondered, and still wonder, how anyone can be taught to be what they are not capable of.

That was when I began to approach verbal attacks online over my book with, first, a simpering high-mindedness. The abusers were often ignorant or just plain vile, and so were beneath any common ground I could offer by way of back-and-forth keypad schooling. Then, later, I started leaving long posts of more education on how sexual orientation and gender identity do not come to anyone on the wings of peer pressure. I have also talked about how I did not write those stories to “initiate” anyone—because there is no cult in the first place—but to tell someone out there that they are not alone in their fears and feelings and failings and anything else I portrayed through my characters in the book.

I suffered a number of professional restrictions (I mean, I’m quite out and loud on social media and HR companies are not too excited about that). What will shock you is that a few of those restrictions came from LGBTQ non-governmental agencies. Apparently, I was too “loud”, to work in their organizations. I must add, however, that this does not mean I didn’t get any underground support from them when the book came out. Some queer Nigerian heavyweights in the activist diaspora and even foreign queer people bought many copies of the book on Amazon.

Do you ever struggle with self-censorship due to the cultural and legal environment in Nigeria?

Social media is the largest compound these days in which we see cultural and legal spaces come alive. If someone goes against what is deemed the only culture of a people and you want them punished for it, just tag them to a call-out post or enlist faceless gossip blogs to spread the fire.

So, yes, I learned to live in sketches and avoid what I wanted to say, even what I wanted to hear. I used to talk about sex in frozen whispers, and my love interests in opposite pronouns. I used to hide behind flat innuendos and hasty likes on comments that resonated with my mind rather than speak my own my mind.

I was scared of someone catching me online and reporting me to someone that mattered. Sometimes, a friend or follow request/notification would come from someone, and, because I felt like they would catch me naked, I would block them instantly.

Soon, I accepted that my fears were there because I fed them. And that they were stopping me from breathing, like a hand choking my throat. Then a new fear was born: what if I died before I found the courage to live—no matter how short?

That was the very moment I chose to stop using unreal pronouns for my objects of attraction.

I told myself, “You have not done anything wrong. You are simply breathing.”

If you are not inherently ashamed and guilty of something, no one can use shame and guilt to imprison you for it.

Nine years ago, I confessed to myself what my internalised queerphobia was doing to me. Today, the story has changed. I now talk about sex without feeling guilty. I now talk about whom I am attracted to without feeling a need to wrap them in shallow falsehoods.

How do you think queer Nigerian writers, artists, and activists can support one another in creating safer spaces for self-expression and storytelling?

This question makes me laugh from my belly. I have my own question. My question is whether queer Nigerian writers, artists, and activists identify as queer. If they do, maybe they already have a safe circle where they can admit it. If they don’t, they will tell you that they do not need to identify with the label of queer before writing about it.

But, as much as that sounds perfectly valid, it’s just a Straw-Man fallacy. If a queer writer doesn’t want to be labelled queer, it’s fine and within their rights. But they cannot be seen as a safe space by other grounded queer writers who are labelled and, therefore, more exposed to identification and, by extension, a sense of danger.

Safe spaces are safe spaces not because they are classy cliques, but because people in there can connect identities and relate to one another’s struggles.

Not too long ago, a poet that writes queer poetry was dragged on social media for impersonating a transgender writer so he could win a heavy prize money meant for poets in the transgender category. I know this poet. He has never claimed to be queer, let alone transgender—in fact, he is decidedly silent during queer discourses and roots himself firmly in cis-heterosexual circles where homophobia thrives.

How can he be a safe space for the bright-eyed up-and-coming queer writer who writes about their own identity and would like to own it as a persona?

Aside from How to Catch a Story That Doesn’t Exist, I’ve had several LGBT stories published in reputable magazines and journals, including hard copies. I earned very few awards, and none of them were from LGBT organisations. I’ve attended bootcamps and writing seminars where the air became tense the moment I addressed my LGBT identity and how it affects my stories. Someone—a well-known writer who I know is still in the closet—once approached me and said, “You write so brilliantly. So, so good. Why don’t you write some non-queer stories for a change?”

I wanted to tell him that I had written non-queer stories and gotten international honours for them as well, but something about the way he spoke and the half-jeering smile on his face convinced me not to.

Are you curious about the LGBT literary reviewers and editors that avoid public association with me and my stories? Do you want to read about queer writers that criticise the work of other queer writers as being overly attention-seeking and agenda-driven? If I begin, you will believe it is about me, rather than a far more serious malaise that is larger than me.

Perhaps I do not have a direct response to your query. Perhaps by restating my views on safe spaces in literary queer groups, one might begin to address these issues.

How do you approach the creative process when beginning a new story? Do you start with characters, themes, or a particular scene?

I normally get my titles first. It feels strange, like if someone is saying, “This is what I want you to write about now.” As a writer, my ear picks up words at a higher frequency than others’. Also, I am a natural eavesdropper, so it is simple for me to draw inspiration from people’s conversations around me and utilise it to create dialogues (and possibly scenarios) in my head that I am barely able to recreate on paper.

On rare occasions, I meet or see someone on the street, and something about them inspires me to build complex characters. When this happens, my story becomes character-driven.

Overall, I don’t actively consider storyline or themes (unless I’m writing an outline for a contest story and must adhere to specific standards). They become incorporated into the tale as the writing continues.

Is there a particular character or story in your collection that was especially challenging for you to write? What made it difficult, and how did you overcome it?

“Akakaeno” from Half of a Yellow Akamu was the most difficult character to write in the collection. He is a young lad with an excessively early sexual awakening. I was frightened that others would meet his character and call me horrible names for creating it.

In fact, only days before submitting the manuscript to my publishers, I considered eliminating the story entirely. But when I remembered why I had written it in the first place, I found the courage to go on with it. There are many Akakaenos out there, and their experiences, no matter how horrible, ought to be heard.

WhatsApp Voicenotes was the toughest piece in the book for me. It seemed like a complicated piece to me, and I needed to follow it on paper. So much so that I purposefully complicated my own mental processes, physically “scattered my own head” while composing it. Now that I think about it, my use of unapologetic native adverbs in the syntax must have been a reflection of how chaotic my mind had been.

But I needed to write it. I needed to show someone out there that the reasons for our acts, our motivations, are not necessarily reasonable. That it is very feasible to create a horrible scenario in your imagination and then go with it because you are too lonely to locate someone to talk to.

After I finished the story, I spent hours napping to regain my sanity.

What’s the most meaningful piece of feedback or reaction you’ve received from a reader about your collection?

Nigerians, Ghanaians, Kenyans, South Africans, Americans, and Europeans all gave me glowing feedback on the book. Each of them made me hold my breath and my eyes water.

But when I read the remark of a specific heterosexual man I used to go to school with, I started crying. He wrote to me in an email:

“This is my first book with such content. “I hope it’s not the last.”

I think you understand why that made me cry.

Your work often incorporates Nigerian vernacular and local expressions. How do you balance the use of Nigerianisms with ensuring your work remains accessible to a global audience?

How did I read and understand Shakespeare’s works at university? How did Things Fall Apart capture the world’s attention? I believe that the heart of a story will find its reader and speak to them. It makes no difference how much code-mixing or code-switching you do; what matters is how your story makes the reader feel.

Language is what binds us together across tribes, races, classes, genders (or lack thereof), sexual identities, and philosophical perspectives.

I make an effort to incorporate any non-English aspects of storytelling into my characters and storylines.

As a child, after reading my mother’s school novels, I would turn to the Yorùbá novels that my father had bought me, so I grew up with a dual focus on language. This, I believe, is what keeps me interested and intentional in diluting my diction with my mother tongue and other forms of Nigerian colloquialism. And because that is the moment when my spirit becomes most authentic, it automatically opens up a portal for me to write in the way I have learnt since childhood, in the way I speak, in my truest form, as I am: mixed, assorted, and rich.

I don’t think any serious global audience can turn down a bowl of steaming-hot relatabilities.

Do you find that Nigerianisms add layers of meaning or cultural nuance that can’t be conveyed through standard English? Can you share an example from your work where a Nigerianism deepened the story?

Yes, I agree that Nigerian expressions have a way of thickening simple words until people that wouldn’t understand such expressions suddenly understand them—even beyond what English would have done.

You know how someone would write, “Your head is not correct,” and even though a white reader does not find the expression familiar, they can still make sense of it. They can even go on to attribute their loose sense of the expression to something more profound, like how correct ideas cannot come from minds (read as “heads”) that are incorrect (read as “loony”).

In my book, in the story “When the Children Come Home,” a white man hears the word “yansh” for the first time in his life, and, albeit he gets tacitly corrected that it is supposed to be “nyash”, he keeps on calling it “yansh” and becomes so curious about the word that he asks aloud, “What in God’s name is ‘yansh’ ?”

I think it’s sublime.

I used that section of the story to highlight the concept of tribal/cultural differences both within Nigeria and between Nigeria and other countries. The Nigerian character who first uses the word in the story believes she has correctly pronounced it. The second Nigerian who uses it pronounces the word differently than the first. And the foreigner among them is stuck on the first pronunciation he heard, despite the fact that it has been “corrected.”

I believe it is reminiscent of how colonialism occurred, how colonial masters’ perceptions of Africa were based on what African leaders initially described Africa to be, and how these colonialists continued to ignore the many other stories about Africa because they could not or would not unlearn what they thought they knew about Africa.

The queer writing landscape in Nigeria is still fraught with tension, fear, and resistance. Enit’ayanfe Ayosojumi Akinsanya’s work actively challenges cultural and legal norms by humanising queer identities and experiences through fiction. The societal hostility towards LGBTQ+ people, exacerbated by oppressive laws, makes storytelling a powerful act of defiance as well as a tool for cultural transformation. However, as Akinsanya’s experiences demonstrate, queer Nigerian writers face both external threats and internal challenges within their communities. Despite these challenges, the bravery of these writers continues to test the limits of what is acceptable in Nigerian literature. By telling their stories, they are fighting not only for recognition, but also for the right to exist—on the page and in society.

Interviews

Myths, Memory, and Representation: Ashley Thorpe’s Vision for Literature

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Ashley Thorpe’s debut children’s book, The Boy to Beat the Gods, brings African mythology to life in a way that hasn’t been seen much in modern children’s literature. Born in Britain with Jamaican roots, Thorpe has always been curious about his heritage. His new book tells the story of Kayode, a young boy who gains the power of the Orishas to save his sister and protect his people.

Ashley Thorpe's book

In this interview, Thorpe talks about how his background and personal experiences influenced his writing. He shares the challenges of getting published and explains why it’s important for children’s books to include diverse characters and stories. Thorpe’s vision is to create a more inclusive world of stories where every child can see themselves as the hero.

Tell us about your background. 

Ashley Thorpe: I was born in Britain. My grandparents on both sides came from Jamaica. Unfortunately, I don’t know much beyond that. I do know that my heritage includes places like present-day Nigeria, Ghana, and Mali. My curiosity about this link has grown over the years, especially during my university days and into adulthood. I’ve been on a journey to learn more about this incredible continent and to reconnect with the knowledge that has been lost over time.

I also have a strong interest in studying mythology from various cultures. Growing up in Europe, I was mostly exposed to Greek and Norse mythology in school. Beyond that, I’ve had to explore on my own. My granddad used to share a lot of Caribbean folklore with me, like Anansi – Ghanaian originated stories – which sparked my fascination even more.

What are your hobbies?

Ashley Thorpe: When I was a child, I used to draw comics a lot. As I grew older, I shifted my focus more towards writing. I also have a deep love for music and a passion for travelling and exploring the natural world. You’ll notice in my book that the landscapes and terrains play a significant role. I find the natural world incredibly rejuvenating, and the Baobab tree, in particular, has a central place in my story.

What actually inspired you to write a story based on a myth?

Ashley Thorpe: My fascination with myths began when I saw items in museums, wrote them down, and tried to learn more about them and the civilisations from which they arose. I was interested in Yoruba mythology, particularly the parallels between the pantheon of the Orishas and gods from other pantheons. For example, Zeus is associated with lightning in Greek mythology. In the Yoruba canon, Sango is related to thunder, lightning, and fire. 

When I first started writing this narrative, the idea was to pit one courageous boy against wicked gods. What could be more high-stakes than confronting true gods? So I realised that there was an excellent opportunity to make something unique using current Orisha mythology. Initially, I found it difficult to imagine a scenario in which one boy could combat all of these gods. But when I read more about the Orishas, I realised that they aren’t flawless characters. They too have flaws in their tales. That inspired how I developed the characters and plotline. For example, in the creation story, Obatala does not complete the creation process because he is drunk on tavern palm wine. So I thought about how to include this into the plot. How can Kayode and his friends exploit this weakness? It was a really interesting thing to do.

Did you face any challenge in writing your novel?

Ashley Thorpe: What I would say is that the more you write, the easier it becomes. Although this is my debut book. it’s actually the third manuscript that I’ve written. I had two books before this, but I couldn’t find an agent for them. So, all of that experience and everything that I’ve learned helped in creating this one. 

My present challenge is deadlines and the pressure of having a book deal rather than unlimited time. I am now under contract so I have to meet strict deadlines. 

If there’s anything a writer hates so much, it’s rejection. It’s like someone telling you that you are not good enough. You faced rejection twice when two of your manuscripts were rejected. How were you able to handle that and motivate yourself to write a third one?

Ashley Thorpe: Two of my manuscripts were rejected by multiple agents. But that is part of the writer’s experience. You need to have thick skin and believe in yourself. I write because, despite previous rejections, I know I can do it. I had something to say, and I would not stop until it was out of my soul. Having a network of people who are going through the same experience is also beneficial. I had friends who were writers.

We’d get together and compose prompt pieces together. We’d make up different stories based on the same prompt words, and we’d share and feedback. We knew we were going through the same struggles with getting on and hoping to sign with an agent. So it was extremely beneficial and kept me encouraged to keep going.

I think writing is a weird industry because there is no certainty in anything. But you just have to hope that someday you’ll learn enough, really, and take something from all of that experience, and know what might work.

I write because, despite previous rejections, I know I can do it. I had something to say, and I would not stop until it was out of my soul – Ashley Thorpe

Tell us about your day as a writer. Do you have specific writer routines or rituals?

Ashley Thorpe: I work as an editor and in children’s publishing. I also assist other writers who are on similar journeys to my own, sharing the knowledge I’ve accumulated over the years to help them reach the point where they can publish their books.

Knowing the best time of day for my writing has helped me create a consistent routine. I usually do my editing in the evenings, but my best writing and ideas come in the morning. This consistency matters more to me than the word count. Whether I write 1,000 words, 500 words, or even just 200 words in a day, progress is progress. It’s not always about having a prolific day; sometimes, any forward movement is valuable, especially when balancing a full-time job.

To keep track of my writing, I maintain a spreadsheet to record my daily progress. This allows me to look back month by month and see my growth, which continues to motivate me. Consistency, even in small increments, is key to making meaningful progress.

So having a tracker will help one monitor their progress?

Ashley Thorpe: Yeah, I’d recommend that. When you see it visually, it really does spur you on. You want to say, yeah, we are getting somewhere. 

Who are the authors that have influenced you, shaped your writing, and inspired you to write?

Ashley Thorpe: There are a couple of writers who were pivotal in my journey. The first is Malorie Blackman. Growing up in the UK as a minority, I faced not only class barriers but also the construct of race. In children’s literature, the default has always been whiteness. I read many books as a kid, but it wasn’t until I was about seven years old that I encountered a book by Malorie Blackman.

I was shocked and speechless because I had never seen a character who looked like me on a book cover before. By that age, I had internalized the idea that people who looked like me couldn’t be heroes in stories. Discovering her work was a pivotal moment. It made me realize that I, too, could be a hero and write about black characters. Before that, I would write stories with white characters because that was all I saw in the books I read. Representation matters. Growing up with the belief that whiteness is the default can lead to self-censorship, making it seem like you don’t fit into the default framework as a black person. Representation helps break that mindset and allows for a broader understanding of who can be a hero and a storyteller. Reading Blackman’s work centered me in a way nothing else had.

The second writer who inspired me is Richard Wright. I was profoundly moved by his autobiography, Black Boy. I remember reading it while on holiday in Italy, just before my second year of university. It inspired me to start writing my novel. That first attempt was terrible, but it became the manuscript I would work on for about ten years. In my early twenties, I lacked discipline, but the inspiration I drew from Wright’s work kept me going.

What’s your advice to aspiring authors?

Ashley Thorpe: Firstly, you need to understand the market. Whatever genre or age group you write for, read what’s current in the market from the last two to three years. This isn’t about copying others; it’s about understanding what is currently selling and finding your voice within that space. Being able to say, “My book would sit alongside these titles on the shelf,” shows agents and publishers that you understand the market. That makes you a stronger and more marketable writer.

Also, find your community. Writing can be a solitary endeavour, filled with self-doubt and fluctuating motivation. Finding your community—whether it’s a writing group, a network of peers, or a mentor—can provide invaluable support. Sharing your journey, getting feedback, writing together, or simply enjoying the camaraderie can keep you grounded and motivated.

You also need perseverance. One key difference between many writers and those who succeed is perseverance. If you persevere, someday, you will become lucky. Luck plays a part in success, but it only comes to those who are prepared. Keep honing your craft and continue writing. When an opportunity arises, you’ll be ready to seize it.

Luck plays a part in success, but it only comes to those who are prepared – Ashley Thorpe.

How do you want to be remembered as a writer? What legacy do you hope to leave? 

Ashley Thorpe: I just had my book launch a few nights ago, and I told the interviewer that this has been a long-time dream for me. Finally seeing my name on the cover and sharing my story with the world is incredible. Everything else that comes from this, like awards, is just a bonus.

For me, the real goal is to have the same impact that Malorie Blackman’s book had on me as a kid. I want to show people who look like me that they can be heroes too. If my stories can help them escape and see themselves in a fantasy world, that would be amazing. That’s what really matters to me.

Do you have any goals for the next few years, genres, projects that you aim to explore? 

Ashley Thorpe: So, I have a two-book deal, and right now we’re editing the second book, which is set to come out around summer 2025. Beyond that, I hope to get another deal with the same publisher because I have a great relationship with my editor. From our first meeting, I knew we were on the same wavelength. She understands what I’m trying to achieve, isn’t intrusive, and knows how to get the best out of me. She’ll suggest adding more battle scenes or details, which has been a fascinating experience since my books have been edited up rather than cut down.

I have ideas for what I want to do next, but I haven’t shared them with my editor yet—only my agent has seen the first three chapters. I can’t say much about them right now, but they will always centre on kids of colour and explore interesting aspects of Diaspora stories in an exciting and entertaining way. 

How do you grow and develop as a writer? Do you have, do you take prompts? Do you have exercises to do?

Ashley Thorpe: I have notes on my desk from courses I took years ago, and I’m refreshing myself on those foundational things I need to keep in mind. Friends also recommend books to me, and I try different techniques to see what works.

Just yesterday, I was at a friend’s book launch, and she told me about something called a character diamond. Before she starts writing, she spends time with her characters, mapping out their good points and flaws. She really gets to know them before writing. I usually make a profile for my characters, but I haven’t interacted with them like that. I thought it was a cool idea, and I might try it for my next book.

Any last words?

Ashley Thorpe: I hope people will buy The Boy to Beat the Gods and enjoy it. It’s the story of my heart. So I hope readers, especially young ones, will enjoy it.

Interviews

Chukwuebuka Ibeh’s Debut and The Rise of Young Voices in African Literature

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by Ikenna Churchill (Managing Editor)

Highlights:

  • If there’s a story inside you, write it. You don’t need permission.
  • Oftentimes, the only thing holding you back is yourself. My advice to young authors is simply to write.

African literature is experiencing a major resurgence driven by a new generation of young writers redefining the continent’s literary landscape. These emerging voices are not only challenging traditional narratives but also bringing fresh perspectives that reflect the contemporary African experience. Among these rising stars is Chukwuebuka Ibeh, whose debut novel, Blessings, marks a significant milestone in this literary movement.

Ibeh’s novel exemplifies how young authors use their platforms to address themes of identity, acceptance, and resilience that resonate deeply with readers within and beyond Africa.

Blessings explores the complexities of identity, the quest for acceptance, and resilience in the face of adversity. Through the journey of Obiefuna, a young boy navigating his sexual identity in a society that criminalizes same-sex relationships, Ibeh portrays societal and familial pressures as factors that shape individual identities in the Nigerian socio-cultural clime.

This narrative not only sheds light on the lived realities of LGBTQIA+ individuals in Nigeria but also contributes to a broader dialogue about the rising need for the acceptance of sexual orientation and identity in Africa.

Chukwuebuka Ibeh’s journey to becoming a published author is a testament to his perseverance and dedication. Growing up in South-South Nigeria’s Port Harcourt, Ibeh–often jotting down his thoughts on scraps of paper–was always passionate about writing.

Over time, these fragments of his imagination coalesced into the manuscript that would become Blessings. Despite numerous challenges, including societal pressures and the difficulty of breaking into the literary world, Ibeh remained steadfast. His determination paid off when he secured a publishing deal which marked the beginning of his literary career and cemented his place in the new wave of African literature.

Akpata Magazine recently engaged in a discussion with Chukwuebuka Ibeh about his work on Blessings and his emergence as a new voice in African literature among other voices.

The conversation has been summarized and edited for brevity and coherence.

Akpata Magazine: Can you share the journey of how Blessings came to be, from initial scraps of paper to a published novel?

Chukwuebuka Ibeh: In the early stages of writing Blessings, I used to have spontaneous visual moments of inspiration: I would write down the scenes that came in these moments on scraps of paper; the scenes were often fleeting. I was afraid that if I did not write them right away, I would lose them.

During the 2020 pandemic, I was contacted by an editor from Penguin Random House who enjoyed one of my short stories. This was when I got the first opportunity to develop the novel. I spent several months indoors revising and crafting the manuscript before finishing the first draft.

What inspired the themes and characters in your debut book?

The characters in Blessings are inspired by real people but redefined to avoid direct representation. I create complex, non-definitive portrayals by drawing on observed traits and nuances and adding or subtracting from them.

The novel’s themes include familial love, the nature of love itself–whether conditional or unconditional, the complexities of marriage, and societal expectations that are all influenced by personal reflections and observations over time.

How does Blessings reflect contemporary Nigerian culture and society for the Gen Z and early Millennials?

Blessings seems to mostly resonate with Gen Z and early millennials in Nigeria as seen in their enthusiasm and acceptance of its themes. The novel reflects a cultural shift towards greater liberalism among young Nigerians.

Although I was initially uncertain about its reception due to its subject matter, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how it has sparked discussions and prompted readers to reconsider their pre-existing views.

While it’s hard to pinpoint exactly how the novel reflects Gen-Z culture, I do hope it can influence them (Gen Z) towards a more liberal mindset.

What personal challenges did you face as a young author during the writing and publishing process? 

As a Nigerian writer, I faced challenges common to many, like frequent power outages that hindered writing on electronic devices. Also, access to supportive institutions, like comprehensive creative writing programs, is limited in Nigeria and across Africa. This is what led me to pursue an MFA in the US.

Another challenge I faced was trying to break into a saturated global literary market. It’s still a daunting task despite the quality of work one produces.

In what way do you hope your book will influence and inspire other young African writers?

I hope Blessings inspires young African writers by showing that it’s possible to write novels outside of the mainstream; I wish there were more novels like it. This would diversify the range of stories available to readers.

I hope “Blessings” inspires young African writers by showing that it’s possible to write novels outside the mainstream.

Chukwuebuka Ibeh

How do you think young voices will shape the future of African literature?

I’m happy to see younger Africans not just consuming but also producing literature. Each generation shapes its culture through various forms of art, including literature. I believe young Africans will continue this tradition and even surpass it.

While I can’t predict the future, I’m optimistic. Books written by young authors, like Blessings, show that African literature has a bright future with diverse voices gaining attention and sparking discussions.

What advice do you have for young Nigerian writers who want to portray their queer experiences but are afraid of the stigma here?

I can’t speak to individual experiences, but if something feels important, that’s a reason to pursue it. However, in Nigeria, the risks can be significant, including potential legal consequences. Protect yourself first and foremost. If you feel confident and ready to face the potential repercussions, go ahead.

If not, it makes you no less courageous. The real issue is the oppressive environment, not the choice to defend yourself. Self-preservation is vital, and you shouldn’t feel pressured to take risks you’re not ready for.

What advice would you give to aspiring young authors who are looking to write their own story?

If there’s a story inside you, write it. You don’t need permission. Oftentimes, the only thing holding you back is yourself. My advice to young authors is simply to write.

If there’s a story inside you, write it. You don’t need permission.

Chukwuebuka Ibeh

Chukwuebuka Ibeh’s debut, Blessings, illuminates the power of storytelling in African literature. His extraordinary journey from scribbling fleeting thoughts on scraps of paper to securing a publishing deal with Penguin Random House exemplifies the relentless spirit and creativity that defines the new wave of African writers.

It is a reminder that even in the face of significant obstacles—societal pressures, infrastructural challenges, and the daunting global literary market—passion and determination can carve out a path to success.

As the literary landscape continues to evolve, the rise of young African voices like Ibeh’s heralds a new era of diversity and innovation.

These voices are not only shaping the future of African literature but also enriching the global literary landscape. In all, Ibeh’s success story encourages aspiring writers to remain steadfast in their creative endeavors because every story, no matter how unconventional, deserves to be told!