‘Writers tend to become one with their stories’

I remember talking to one of my mentors (Dr. Nkem Ezeilo) about it in the summer of 2015 and I had all these doubts and she said, ‘I don’t see what the problem is; go and do it. You will do well because this is just one more thing you know how to do, but […]

I remember talking to one of my mentors (Dr. Nkem Ezeilo) about it in the summer of 2015 and I had all these doubts and she said, ‘I don’t see what the problem is; go and do it. You will do well because this is just one more thing you know how to do, but you don’t know that you know.’ She passed on, on September 11, 2016 and I won that award at the end of October, 2016. As you can imagine, the irony is still bitter and I feel robbed. It’s something that I’ve sort of written about in the story titled ‘The One’; there’s a young woman in that story whose mentor dies of cancer and she has to figure out some stuff on her own, but she finds out that her mentor set up certain things and people in place for her without her knowledge. And to a large extent, I feel like Nkem set up certain things for me when she was here, even without telling me.
Bookshelf:  What are you working on at the moment?
Nnani: My company, The Fearless Storyteller House Emporium, is about to release a novel by one of Nigeria’s most incisive investigative journalists. We have also got a bouquet of online writing courses and I love the feedback that we have gotten so far. I’m also writing a trilogy aimed at teenagers.