In Conversation

This week we spoke to ’Pemi Aguda about early roots, fitting a life around writing, and telling the stories of the city that raised her.

Interviewed by Zulaikhah Agoro.

ZA: When did this whole writing thing start? When was the seed planted?  What was the special thing about writing that captured you at that stage? 

PA: I’ve been writing as long as I can remember! There’s an illustrated novel from when I was really young. (With hindsight, it was basically Enid Blyton fan fiction, complete with tea time in between mysteries.) It’s too far back now to know exactly what captured me, but like many writers, I was first a voracious reader. Perhaps I just wanted to keep the story going. Maybe that’s what makes writers—we want to keep the story going.

ZA: Keep the story going, I have never heard it expressed like that but I totally agree. In 2020, your novel-in-progress The Suicide Mothers won the Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award, and now your debut short story collection is out in the world! What was the journey to publication like for you? How does it feel to make your debut with Ghostroots? 

PA: I’ve been publishing short stories since I was in my late teens, first as little (cringe) missives on Facebook, then on the blogs where I had weekly fiction columns. Long before my first literary publication, long before my MFA, before any accolades, people—from Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and other African countries—were reading and discussing my stories, and so part of the joy of Ghostroots is that I can share this book with those who’ve been so supportive for well over a decade! This collection is for all of us. That my stories get to find new readers is delicious frosting on the cake. It feels lucky and hard-won and inevitable all at the same time.  

ZA: Now I’d like to talk about Ghostroots in more detail. Tell us about these stories, how did they come into existence, and why are they so important to you?

PA: It wasn’t until I had written several of these stories that I started to see they were interested in questions about family, about what we owe ourselves versus what we owe our community, and how we carry the weight of ancestry. Can we exist outside of the context of these ties? Should we? The themes didn’t come first, though. What came first were the “what if?” ideas: What if a last-born son watched a fever kill all the last-born sons on his street, watched death waltz towards him? What happens when a housegirl is kidnapped by a woman with good intentions? While writing into these ideas, my own preoccupations naturally made themselves manifest. 

ZA: There is one unifying and exciting character that runs through the core of this collection; Lagos. I am a little partial to the city so I will stop myself from running into effusive praise, but I’d like to ask you instead, why Lagos? Was it a means to spotlight the modern urban Nigerian experience, or did you have entirely different motivations? 

PA: Lagos, because Lagos raised me. That’s the simple answer. Lagos is what I know, and yet, Lagos is what I am baffled by. For me, this city offers the perfect balance between insight, or instinctual knowledge, and surprise. It helps that there are enough wild stories to keep anyone inspired. All you have to do is turn on the radio, and there’s some absurdity being stated as fact. 

ZA: On the note of the absurdity, I 100% concur! Getting to the technical side of the equation now, can you talk us through your writing process? What does it look like in a practical sense, and how do you balance it with your daily life?

PA: My writing process differs drastically from story to story, story to novel. Mostly, I need to hold an idea in my head for a long time before attempting to write. To start before it has grounded might be to kill it. There are many carcasses in my folders. Sometimes, I’ll read poetry or a fiction passage as a way in, so that I’m inspired for my own work.

As for daily life, even if it means writing on my phone while transiting between activities, I will find the time if I want to write. When I had a hectic job that refused to fit in the confines of a 9-6, I wrote at lunch breaks. That’s as practical as it gets: if I want to write, I will write.

ZA: I like the bare-knuckles practicality of that; if one really wants to write, you will always find a way around to it. Still on the topic of craft and technique, as author of both a short story collection and a forthcoming novel, what differences do you perceive between the process of writing a short story versus long-form fiction? Which do you find more enjoyable?

PA: I find both enjoyable in different ways. I think the biggest difference for me is scope and immersion. So far, writing a novel means that the book follows me through the rest of my life. Everything I see or eat or hear is refracted through the world of the novel. Whereas the short story feels more like a short cold plunge. This doesn’t necessarily mean that I write stories quickly, it just means that they are perhaps less sticky, less prone to attaching themselves to everything else. 

ZA: According to popular news, your debut novel The Suicide Mothers is coming out next year and I am already excited about that. Can you give us a brief snippet of what to expect in that new work?

PA: Thank you! You can expect: Strangeness! Intrigue! More Lagos! Water! Women! 

ZA: More Lagos, yes!!! Finally, if you could give one piece of advice to aspiring authors, what would it be?

PA: Read everything. Beyond your comfort zone. Beyond what’s popular. Beyond what’s new. Then, go write. (Here’s a bonus from my mum: watch your posture! Those hours of writing can be brutal on the spine.)

’Pemi Aguda is from Lagos, Nigeria. She has an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan.
Her writing has won O. Henry Prizes, a Nommo Award for Short Story, a Henfield Prize, a Tyson Prize for Fiction, Hopwood Awards, and the Writivism Prize. Her work has been supported by an Octavia Butler Memorial Scholarship, a Juniper Summer Workshop scholarship, an Aspen Words Emerging Writer fellowship, and her novel-in-progress won the 2020 Deborah Rogers Foundation Writers Award. She was a 2021 Fiction Fellow with the Miami Book Fair, a 2022 MacDowell fellow, and is the current Hortense Spillers Assistant Editor at Transition Magazine.

You can read an excerpt of her debut collection, Ghostroots here.