She understood what perhaps they are only just learning. That if you attempt to clean the messiness of life you end up scrubbing the life away from l… - Yewande Omotoso

My mother died when I was 23, and apart from the recent birth of my children, that is the most profound experience of my life. The grief that followed is a sharp memory of mine and I’ve often joked that the experience irrevocably marked my writing.

Hating, after all, was a drier form of drowning.

Coming from across cultures, I believe I mostly value difference as opposed to being threatened by it... Over time as I gain in knowledge and become braver I hope to set more stories solidly in Nigeria or Barbados but you cannot, as a writer, fake familiarity with a place – I don’t think so anyway.