Chika Unigwe is a leading Nigeria's international author. In fact, she is reportedly Nigeria's most significant female novelist after Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She has dozens of works to show for this. She has also won several national and international awards. The Belgium government in 2023 decorated her with its national honours. Chika has not only judged emerging African writing as panel member of such international awarding institutions as The Caine Prize for African Writing, she studied it, teaches it, headlines it in conferences, trains younger writers, is at home with who is who in African literature. In this interview with Uduma Kalu, Chika discuses the place of African writing in world literature. But most important, Chika, for the first time, opens up on how she starting writing.
Excerpts:
How did you become a writer and how did you get published?
This is a two -part question. Why I became a writer and how I became a (published) writer. I suspect that the former is the question you're asking. I was a big reader as a child. I was curious and I loved scribbling that it seemed inevitable that I'd pursue a career in writing. I was lucky to grow up in a home where I had access to books and where my reading (and scribbling) was encouraged.
We often went home to Osumenyi ( my hometown) on school holidays, and one time, I wanted to "write a proper book," by which I wanted to type out and staple my writing. My father went out and came home with a typewriter and paper and stapler for me. Now, as as an adult, I can appreciate the trouble he went through to source these for me. He could very easily have told me to wait until we returned to Enugu, or told me to write ninth journal he'd given me.
My parents showed me by their actions that my dreams were valid. They read everything I wrote. I also knew, from a young age, that writing was a possibility because my primary two classmate's mother was a writer (Flora Nwapa), and my older siblings were friends with the Ekwensi's (Cyprain Ekwensi's children) . I recall that at least, on one occasion, Nwapa came to our class to speak to our teacher and gave us her children's books to keep us busy while she and our teacher talked.
It was helpful for me to know, from a. young age, that writers were regular people, and didn't live in far away places.
You have judged new African writing as member of the Caine Prize for African Writing among others. What do did you see is the future of African writing.
The Caine Prize is a prize for short stories, not books. I also founded an NGO , Awele Creative Trust that runs a yearly short story competition for Nigerian youth (16-26), and I have on a few occasions been asked to be an external committee member when Nigerian students defend their MFA or PhD (in creative writing) dissertations. What I can tell you from experience is that African ( Nigerian) writing is thriving. There is exciting , innovative, bold work being done in all genres. I assign quite a number of African writers, and so I read a lot of what is being published.
You only have to look at how many of these new writers are winning major prizes to see that African writers are colonizing the world.
Are your works published in Nigeria? Does Belgium appreciate your works?
I have been lucky to have had my works published in Nigeria too. Farafina published my debut; Paresis published Night Dancer, and Mason published The Middle Daughter. Belgium was my home for a long time, it's also my country of love . I was made a Knight of the Order of the Crown for my contributions to literature, so yes, Belgium appreciates my works.
You also write for children?
I do write for children, but I do so mostly on commission. It's a difficult genre to write because one doesn't have the real estate for a sprawling narrative. I love writing sentences. I was asked recently to write a K3 book ( 250 words) and my first draft was over 2000 words. It took many painful excisions to pare it down to 250 words and still say everything that needed to be said. It was a good but painful (and useful) exercise in conciseness.
How much do literary competitions aid writers and publishing? Do we have the two enough here? I can't speak to whether Nigeria has enough literary contests and publishers. I can, however, speak to how winning contests have helped me as a writer. I'm often plagued with self-doubt when I write. I do my best, obsess over every single sentence, and polish my drafts until I can't polish them any further—or until my agent says they're ready to be sent out on submission. The praise of my agent and editors is wonderful, but there's something uniquely validating about having others judge your work alongside many others and still find it worthy.
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