In Conversation

This week we spoke to Peace Adzo Medie about her journey to publishing, and how her belief in her stories led to His Only Wife, and her latest novel, Nightbloom.

Interviewed by Nancy Adimora.

NA: I’d love to start by taking it back to the very beginning. Can you walk us through your journey to writing? Where did it all start?

PAM: I didn't really plan on being a writer. I began writing really early when I was about 9 or 10, and I began writing for myself. I read a lot and I lived in Ho, in Ghana, and we had a very small library that just didn’t have enough books. After school, we would go there and it was a struggle to get the books that you wanted so you had to be very strategic. I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but one day I figured out that if I wrote my own stories and I set it aside for a few weeks, I would forget the story enough that I could read it and pretend like someone else had written it. 

That's basically how I kind of stumbled into writing. I never intended to write for other people or to be published. But when I started doing this, I realised that I really enjoyed it, that writing was almost as good or sometimes even better than reading. So I just stuck with it, and it just became this thing that I did, but only for myself. Then I came to grad school, and in grad school I didn’t read as much as I used to because I was overwhelmed with everything else. But when I was finishing up my PhD, I just automatically went back to writing again.

NA: You said something about realising that writing is sometimes even better than reading - can you elaborate on that? What was it about writing that captured your interest?

PAM: Well, I think it's because I enjoyed stepping into other people's lives. I plot and plan my stories now, but when I was younger, I would have no plan — I would just take a piece of paper or take my notebook and say I'm going to write a story about a girl. I would know nothing about that girl and I would start writing and somehow there would be a story. I think what I enjoyed was the process of getting to know my characters and creating a whole new world. As a reader, you’re consuming or absorbing this world that someone else has created. I love reading, but writing pushes you a bit further. You now have to get to know the people in the stories, to imagine lives for them. That process of imagining and creating is where I found the most joy.

NA: And when did you transition from writing for yourself, to wanting to be published?

PAM: The transition probably happened when I was working on my doctoral dissertation. Around that time, I started sending out short stories. Short stories were more manageable because, in some ways, submitting them was similar to submitting academic research articles. So I think it was easy for me to do. But I remember going online, because I didn't know much about publishing or people in publishing - I only knew one person who was a writer before I published my book. I went on Google and searched, ‘how do you publish a book?’ and the steps just seemed so overwhelming. You need connections, you need to have a certain kind of training, you need an agent, and if you send your work to an agent, it ends up in a slush pile. It was all too much. So I never sent out a book manuscript - my plan was that I would look into publishing my books when I retired from academia. I just figured that I would keep writing, then when I was 65 or 70, I would try to get published. That was the plan. 

NA: So I’m assuming an agent saw one of your short stories and approached you directly?

PAM: That's exactly what happened. 

NA: Well I’m glad you got approached because it eventually led to your extraordinary debut novel, His Only Wife. What struck me about that novel was the opening line — “Elikem married me in absentia; he did not come to our wedding.” — it still gives me chills. Most people would agree that the hardest part of any project is getting started, so when you’re think about writing a new novel, how do you settle on the opening sentence? How do you know where to start?

PAM: So my books never end up being the books that I planned. His Only Wife was a very different story when I started writing it. I was returning to Ghana and His Only Wife started off with a main character who in some ways shared some similarities with my own life - someone living in the US and coming back to Ghana after graduate school. I'm sure you can see that Afi in His Only Wife is not that person, so that shows you how much my writing changes once I begin writing. 

But when I'm thinking about starting a book, I want in those first few pages for the reader to get a good sense of who the main characters are, but also a good sense of the tension or conflict that is going to propel the book forward. So in those first few pages or the first chapter, by the time you get to the end of that chapter, you have a good sense of the characters, and you have a good sense of what is driving them, and what is driving the story. That's what I aim for.

NA: When most non-Ghanaians speak about Ghana we’re usually only referring to Accra, so it was refreshing to read a story set in Ho. I noticed that Ho also makes an appearance in your second book. Can you tell us more about your relationship with Ho — do you see yourself setting all your stories there, and do you feel like your books are in some ways an ode to this place you call home?

PAM: When I was growing up, I never read a book set in Ho. So in some ways it's a statement. It's me saying: there's this place, and it's important, and it's beautiful. It's something to live into adulthood and not read a single book about where you grew up. So to me, it's essential and, in some ways, it's for all the people who have never seen themselves on the pages, who have never seen their hometown on the pages, especially children, because reading about where you’re from is like seeing yourself for the first time. It's not to say that people don't know that where they come from is important, but seeing it in a book is very validating. It's saying that your experience matters, and this place that you come from matters. 

A few weeks ago, I was in Ho. I spend a lot of time in Ho. I love writing about Ho. But interestingly, in Nightbloom, one of the characters detests Ho and that was also very fun to write, because I’m probably always going to portray Ho as this amazing place, but I'm also going to push myself to write about someone who doesn't share my love of Ho, and who doesn't see it in the way that I do. As a writer, I love writing about characters who differ from me in terms of my values, and the things that I care about.

NA: I love that, and now the whole world knows about Ho because His Only Wife blew up! It was a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick, and I remember seeing it absolutely everywhere which was exciting to see. Were you expecting the book to do so well, and did the success have any impact on how you approached your second book?

PAM: I’m a reader first, so when I'm writing, I’m constantly asking myself whether I’m enjoying what I’m writing. If I feel strongly about a book or a story that I'm writing, I know that there are going to be readers who feel strongly about it as well - so when I was writing His Only Wife, I trusted myself enough to know that other people would enjoy reading it. It was around the time that there was a lot of talk about how there weren't enough books on Africa that dealt with the everyday, that showed the complexity of life on the continent, that didn't just focus on a few tragedies. I imagined Ghanaians would want to read it, especially Ghanaian women. So when I was writing, I was thinking about Ghanaian women first because I felt like parts of the story would be familiar to them. I thought women from other African countries would also be interested because there are so many similarities across the continent. So yes, I had this feeling that it would be a book that people would want to read. Then it ended up being read more widely than I thought it would be, which was, of course, very satisfying. 

In terms of how it's influenced my writing and publishing going forward, Nightbloom was finished before I published His Only Wife, and I had already written several chapters of the third book so, luckily, the reception to His Only Wife didn’t really influence the stories at all.

NA: Wow, you don’t waste time! Your publishers must really love you. That’s brilliant, and it’s a nice segue into Nightbloom. I love to hear authors describe their books in their own words, so can you tell us what this new novel is about?

PAM: Yes, but before I do, I'll step back and tell you how the book began. First of all, my books never come from one place. There are several different things driving any story that I tell, but one of the drivers was my return to Ghana after my PhD. When I returned I was surprised, well not really surprised, but I found that a lot of my friends had moved on, which is normal. I had been gone for eight years, so it was a bit unrealistic for me to think that I would just come back and slide into whatever life that I had before. So I began thinking about friendship and this book started off as a story of a high school reunion. It started off as a story about several women returning to Ghana after 20 years, some of them already in Ghana, and when they see each other they realise they need to work through some things...

NA: You need to write that story. Promise me you're going to write that story.

PAM: I can’t make promises because I’ll plan to write it and the story will turn into something else! 

NA: Ugh. Ok, continue, I'm listening. 

PAM: So that was the original idea for the book, and friendship has always been at the centre of the book. But, because of my academic research, I also wanted to write about sexual violence - but not as something that completely overwhelmed someone's life, because people experience sexual violence, but they also live, they work, they fall in love, they go to parties, they fight with their partners, and all of that. I wanted to focus on this issue of sexual violence, and see how it plays out in someone's life without having it being the thing that defines the person's life. 

But what is the story about? It's a story about two friends growing up in Ghana who start off as the best of friends. Then we see over time that they begin to drift apart and a rift forms. Friendship is a lens through which I explore how perceived obligation to family shapes lives and how this can be a burden on women. We also get to see how class differences determine the steps that the girls take, and how these differences come between them as they grow. The book is also about race and life as an upper middle-class Ghanaian in the US; After leaving Ghana, Akorfa struggles to adjust to life in the US and to having a lower status than she had at home. This difficult adjustment to life as a Black woman in the US eventually affects what happens when Akorfa and Selasi meet again as adults.

But what I really tried to do in this book is show how these two women go through life and experience all of the milestones in life with this rift always just bringing them down, and how they try to reckon with it. And part of the reckoning is how they remember what happened. So structurally, the book has two characters telling the same story. Part of it was me trying to explore how people make sense of the truth. What is the truth? I'm sure you've had that experience where two people see the same thing and come up with very different stories. You have friendships where both parties are upset that they've been wronged, and if two people say they've been wronged, who exactly is wrong? I really wanted to explore that - the idea of truth, the idea of memory. How do we remember, and what determines how we remember? Is it a case that our memories are just neutral representations of what happened? Is it possible that we'll remember things in a certain way because it serves our interests? I was really interested in this idea of friendship and with the ending of Nightbloom…

NA: Wait, I hope this isn't a spoiler? 

PAM: No, not directly. So the ending of Nightbloom… okay, let me try to say this without spoiling it. In the end, both women make separate choices on how they're going to deal with what happened to them. One could look at those choices and say, I don't agree with either of those choices or I would have done things differently, but I wanted to write a story that reflects the reality of what happens to people when they experience violence in a community in which they don't have support. 

So that’s the book in a nutshell. It's kind of a meditation on friendship, and on truth, and on memory. I'm probably jumping ahead, but people ask me what lesson or what message I want readers to take away. When I began writing the book, I had several messages that I thought were key, but by the time I got to the end of the book, what mattered to me most was that the story was told.

NA: Hmmm. I love that. And can you share your writing process? What does writing look like for you in a practical sense?

PAM: A lot of my writing happens in my head before I put anything down. I hear about people who spend time plotting and have detailed storyboards and I really think that's amazing, but I’m not that kind of person. I do all of that in my head. Before I begin writing, I usually have a story from beginning to end in my head. That’s why, when I was writing His Only Wife, I was already thinking about Nightbloom.

My actual writing practice has changed quite a bit. When I was writing His Only Wife and Nightbloom, I was based at Princeton completing my postdoc, so I usually woke up at 4am. I would write until about 6 or 7am, get ready, and then be at the library when it opened to work on my research articles. 

I tend not to write in the evenings, because I'm just too exhausted. So most of my writing happens really early. Now, it's become really difficult because academia in the UK takes over your life, it leaves you with so little time, so I struggle to wake up at 4am. But on very good days, I wake up at 5 or 6am and try to get some writing done before the workday begins. I also work weekends, so on Saturdays and Sundays, I get a lot of writing done as well.

NA: That sounds very intense but I love that you’ve found a rhythm that allows you to balance it all. And finally, if you could give one piece of advice to aspiring authors, what would it be?

PAM: Tell the story you want to tell. It's a very simple message but it's really affected my writing in a positive way. I hadn't read any book on Ghana like His Only Wife so I couldn't look at anyone's trajectory of success and say ‘this person wrote a book like this so if I write it, I will have a similar response’. I just knew that this was the story I wanted to tell. 

You have to believe in the story and trust the book will find its readers and readers will find the book.

Peace Adzo Medie’s debut novel, His Only Wife, was a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, a New York Times Notable Book of 2020, and a Time Magazine Must-Read Book of 2020. It was also a Reese’s Book Club pick. Her book, Global Norms and Local Action: The Campaigns to End Violence Against Women in Africa, was published by Oxford University Press in 2020. She has won numerous awards for her scholarship and has held several fellowships, including the Oxford-Princeton Global Leaders Fellowship. She holds a PhD in public and international affairs from the University of Pittsburgh and a BA in geography from the University of Ghana.

You can read an excerpt of Nightbloom here.