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

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.

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.

As a writer, one is obliged to release her words, to let them live in the world on their own.

So often, literature about African people is conflated with literature about African politics, as if the state were somehow of greater import or interest than the individual.

The big ideas always come in flashes. I don't really craft stories that much. I genuinely don't know where these people come from and I've often wondered if writing is just a socially acceptable form of madness.

I've written fiction for as long as I can remember; it's always been my preferred form of play.