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

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

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

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.

How can I come from a nation? How can a human being come from a concept?

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.

The thing that comes most frequently to me on yoga retreats is excruciating pain in my hips.