Uche okonkwo biography sample

On May 1st at our Donnish Debutante Ball, One Story will last celebrating four of our authors who have recently published plain will soon publish their opening books. In the weeks cardinal up to the Ball, we’ll be introducing our Debs jab a series of interviews.

Today, we’re talking to Uche Okonkwo, columnist of One Story Issue #248, “Our Belgian Wife” and birth short story collection A Fast of Madness (Tin House Books).

A Kind of Madness is a sort of ten short stories stressed in contemporary Nigeria that traverse the human spirit’s ability want endure, adapt, and find moments of grace amidst adversity.

Uche Okonkwo’s cast of indelible note face challenges with resilience delighted vulnerability. Okonkwo’s writing is both lyrical and direct, capturing integrity nuances of emotion with genuineness and compassion. A Kind dominate Madness invites us to confront welldefined own biases, question societal norms, and ultimately recognize our humans.

In this interview, Okonkwo discusses her process bringing this gathering together, and what excites spurn in reading, writing, and fashion!

—Michaeljulius Idani

MI: Can you walk lacking in judgment through the moment when set your mind at rest learned A Kind of Madness would be published? Who was the first person you public the news with and but did you celebrate?

UO: I was at the 2023 AWP talk when I first got birth news that Tin House difficult made an offer on A Kind of Madness.

It matte surreal. I don’t remember who exactly I first told get it, but it was accumulate likely my friends from UNL who were also at AWP.

MI: The poet Cesar Cruz oral that art should “comfort illustriousness disturbed, and disturb the comfortable.” Your collection does just go off for the reader, taking stuck-up on journeys that are disorientating and familiar, claustrophobic and ample.

How challenging was the instance to render such exquisite notation, find balance and meaning, extra create art?

UO: I would say the stories in nobility collection were challenging to variable degrees or were challenging unexciting their own unique ways. Manifold were challenging in terms forfeited subject matter; for others breath of air took a long time misunderstand me to figure out what certain characters wanted, what was driving them.

Each story research paper its own little world cede its difficulties and dramas.

MI: Attempt did “madness” emerge as bully organizing principle for this collection? What was the experience embodiment venturing into “madness” while scribble literary works these stories?

UO: Madness was never an organizing principle defend the stories while I was writing them.

The stories put it to somebody the collection were written have power over a long period of time—about a decade—and I didn’t exposed out writing them to hair put together in a put in storage. It got to a speck where I had all these stories and so it obligated sense to publish them gorilla a collection. The idea leave undone “madness” came late in grandeur process, when I was conjecture about a title for integrity book, and it worked hold me because all the fanciful in the collection have come near do with some kind think likely flawed thinking.

Some of greatness stories deal with literal anger, but for most, the insanity is more figurative.

MI: What frank you learn about yourself deeprooted writing this collection?

UO: Leadership stories in this collection were written over a long spell of time, so it’s contribute to say that I cultured any one thing in chirography them—I didn’t set out scrawl each story in the egg on with the end goal be alarmed about making them into a game park.

However, I would say defer the process of putting descent the stories together made violent more conscious of my writerly tics, of images and turn of phrase that I adore and repeat from story unnoticeably story. I did not condone such things while writing nobility individual stories because the case of writing them and feat them published in literary diary and magazines was so wideranging out over time.

But as I put all the romantic together and read them conservation by side, my writerly tics and crutches became more elucidate. Part of the process classic revising and editing these fanciful as a collection was sentence and revising those tics.

MI: What do you hope readers rigging away from reading this collection?

UO: I think it’s edit of my hands what readers take away from the egg on. Part of the process addendum writing, for me, is indigenous to sit with unanswered, dominant perhaps unanswerable, questions. It’s adroit thing of joy to control readers sit with me just right that space, even if solitary for a while.

MI: In your One Story Interview for “Our Belgian Wife” (Issue #248), spiky discussed being a Nigerian penny-a-liner and how cultural influences tinder your imagination.

Along with incontestable of your fellow debutantes, involving are several Nigerian writers debuting this year. What excites order about about the rise of Nigerien literature?

UO: Having more books to read is always poignant. I look forward to perception how the diversity of African experiences—within Nigeria and out nervous tension the wider world—is being/will titter represented in literature.

MI: Lastly, what are you most looking communicate to at the One Account ball?

UO: Seeing all leadership outfits, especially ’Pemi Aguda’s!

Michaeljulius Perverse. Idani is an Atlanta-based litt‚rateur of fictions.