As a novelist, I ask of myself only that I tell the truth and that I tell it beautifully.

Being a twin, and being my sister's twin, is such a defining part of my life that I wouldn't know how to be who I am, including a writer, without that being somehow at the centre.

I write essays to clear my mind. I write fiction to open my heart.

The summer I finished my first novel Ghana Must Go, I drove across west Africa: from Accra to Lomé to Cotonou to the deliciously named Ouagadougou.

I consider myself West African, among other cultural identities, and a writer, among other creative ones.

When writing screenplays, it's a matter of remembering to leave off the page anything and everything that doesn't appear on the screen.

When I'm working, I'm so narrowly focused on sound, language, rhythm, flow, that I rarely feel the emotion of the text. It's only after - long after - I've finished a piece that I can experience in any way its emotional charge.