Irenosen Okojie; the Nigerian diaspora writer on the rise
Since 2016, when she published ‘Butterfly Fish’, her debut novel, Irenosen Okojie has been a writer on the rise. Though the Nigerian-british author left her home country when she was eight years old, her stories incorporate magic realism and also make use of her West African heritage. These literary skills are obvious in her debut novel, which was aptly described as a smooth literary hooch, with a dark personality and complex finish by those who have read it.
From her short story collections and to her novel, first time readers of her works are usually intoxicated by their rich imaginative ardour. Her secret is getting active readers hooked with her unique storytelling and writing style.
“I never want my readers to be passive. I am challenging myself as a writer when I come to the page, so hopefully as a byproduct the reader will be challenged and intrigued and it will not be a passive experience for them,” she says.
Recalling how she started her debut novel, she noted that it was originally intended to be a short story. “It started as a short story, which was picked up by a literary project run by Spread the Word. On the program I was mentored by Donna Daley-clarke. She was of the view that the story could be potentially turned into a novel. I was on the program for a year, at the end of which I got to publish an excerpt of my novel, as part of an anthology”, she notes.
Moreover, she sacrificed her plum job in London to concentrate on writing the novel. The sacrifice paid off as ‘Butterfly Fish’ won her the Betty Trask Award in 2016.
Aside from ‘Butterfly Fish’, Okojie has many other works to her credit.
The works include; Speak Gigantular, short stories, published in 2016, Nudibranch: A collection of short stories published by Little, Brown Book Group in November 2019, and Grace Jones, which has won her the 2020 AKO Caine Prize for African Writing, the biggest recognition for her so far.
Grace Jones was published last year in Okojie’s book Nudibranch, her second short story collection and her third book.
Speaking on the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing, the Nigerian-british author credits her win to her extra confidence as a black female experimental writer who has felt she was operating on the fringes.
Commenting on the story, she explains that the short story on Grace Jones follows an impersonator of the singer as she mourns the death of her family in a house fire. For the judges of the prize, the short story is a radical story that plays with logic, time and place, as well as, risky, dazzling, imaginative and bold.
Commenting on Okojie’s feat, Kenneth Olumuyiwa Tharp, Caine prize chair of judges and director of The Africa Centre, says that the journey of Okojie’s main protagonist Sidra, a young woman who has moved to London from Martinique, “moves exquisitely and seamlessly between the exploration of the universal experiences of unspeakable suffering, pleasure and escape, and the particular experience of being black and African in a global city such as London”.
“It is intense and full of stunning prose; it’s also a story that reflects African consciousness in the way it so seamlessly shifts dimensions, and it’s a story that demonstrates extraordinary imagination. Most of all, it is world-class fiction from an African writer,” Tharp says.
Okojie is an arts project manager and curator based in London. Her writing has been published in The New York Times, The Observer, The Guardian, the BBC and the Huffington Post, and she is a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.
She has received nominations for a number of awards and she has been a judge for other literary competitions.
Her 2016 collection of short stories, Speak Gigantular, was shortlisted for the 2016 inaugural Jhalak Prize, as well as, the 2017 Edge Hill Short Story Prize. Her story “Animal Parts” was nominated for a 2016 Shirley Jackson Award, and her short story “Synsepalum” was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 to celebrate the BBC National Short Story Award 2018.
Also in 2018, Okojie was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
She has also become a literary activist. She was among the many critics of the Man Booker Prize for having a shortlist dominated by white males in a long time. The sustained criticism resulted in a change since 2015 when Marlon James, a Jamaican writer, was shortlisted and he eventually won the prize.
She is currently writing a second novel, but said she finds the process of short story writing feverish, and filled with a sense of urgency.
However, she appreciates Donna Daley-clarke; winner of 2006 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, Best First Book, Europe and South Asia, for mentoring and encouraging her to explore the novel genre.