'This year I want to take steps towards a feature film...'. Part 2, An Interview with Umar Turaki.

The joy of running a blind read competition like we do at the Short Story Day Africa Prize is the mystery. We come to the story first and learn about other interesting facets of the writer's life only at the end. Umar Turaki is also an accomplished film maker and here he elaborates on the interplay between his visual pieces and his writing as well as his influences and plans for the future.

 

Migrations is available now in all good bookstores in South Africa. They will be happy to order it for you if they don't have it on the shelves. It is also currently available as an eBook. It will be published in the US and UK in September. 

Right. We need to talk about your love of filmmaking. Apart from a multitude of short films, in 2013 you gave us Tolerance – the story of a young newlywed couple who slowly begin to peel each other’s layers away – finding out for the first time who they’ve really married, and last year you delivered Salt, which screened at the Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles, the Zanzibar International Film Festival, the Durban International Film Festival and the African International Film Festival. Tell us about these short films.

UMAR: These short films have been largely exercises in honing my skill as a cinematic storyteller. With Tolerance, I wanted to work in a way I hadn’t before, which was to write a script that was specially tailored for two actors I had in mind, to workshop the script with them and allow that process to flow back into the script itself. I wanted to aim for a naturalism I was seeing in some of Scorsese’s work, and PTA’s work (ed. - P. T. Anderson), and even Fellini.

I also worked with natural light throughout and operated the camera personally. So I really exerted myself creatively on so many levels, and it was ultimately a rewarding experience. I embraced the technical limitations and even allowed them to become a part of the aesthetic. That window’s blown out? Well, too bad. The wall’s too bare? Well, sorry, but forget about it, focus on the story and the performances. I was putting those two things front and centre and saying to hell with everything else.

With Salt, which looks at the night of the Ebola salt baths in Nigeria, I wanted better production values, so we got lights and paid more attention to production design and just tried to use better equipment all around. But Salt was also a kind of sudden, urgent undertaking in the sense that I was responding to a current issue at the time and wanted to capture and preserve that moment in our history as distilled through my own personal experience, not to mention trying to exorcise my own demons. If the Ebola crisis hadn’t touched Nigeria in the way it did, I would have made a different film, something other than Salt. Both films share the virtue of having all the action unfold in one location, and it was a creative challenge I set myself, as well as a practical decision to make it easier to shoot.

I read somewhere that you missed all the film festival screenings of Salt and the plane to LA for the Pan African Film Festival. What happened there, and how did you handle the disappointment?

UMAR: Up until the Ake Festival in 2016, where Salt screened, I couldn’t attend any of the festival screenings in any of the different countries, chiefly for financial reasons, but my producer and I did try to make it to LA. She got denied a visa for reasons best known to the US embassy while there was an error with my visa appointment application document that wasn’t pointed out to me by the embassy until the morning of my interview, by which time I literally had less than 72 hours to get my visa and get on the plane. I had reached the door, ready for my appointment, and they told me I needed to reschedule because of said error, and the next available date was about a week away. I tried requesting an expedited appointed and was denied. Thank God the ticket hadn’t yet been bought.

In your own opinion, has your film-making career or your writing career been more fulfilling, or promising, and why do you think that is? What would you like to focus on more in the future?

UMAR: I think I’ve probably expended more energy in getting my film-making career off the ground, and that has taken its toll on things, one of them being that my writing aspirations have had to take a backseat. Beyond that it’s hard to say. If I were to think of specific moments of deep fulfillment as far as my work goes, it’s mostly related to my film work, and that’s probably because I’ve been doing it for longer and more intensely and against so many odds. As crazy as it sounds, I would like to keep both going concurrently. This year I want to take steps towards a feature film, while also continuing to work on my book and other stories. However, writing has always been what got me started on this path and it’s not inconceivable that a time may come when I “retire” from writing and directing films to focus on just writing books. But that’s still a long way off.

Tell us a little bit more about your current or upcoming film projects and what inspired them.

UMAR: I just completed a pilot episode for a limited series titled Deviant. I’m currently using that as a proof of concept to raise funding to shoot the remaining five episodes. Deviant is about a teenage orphan who’s also good at stealing things and she is approached by a mysterious stranger who promises her information about her real parents if she will carry out some tasks for him. I wanted to tell a compelling story that was episodic and had elements of suspense and mystery.

I’d also like to start putting groundwork in place for my first feature film, a drama that’s based on my short Tolerance. It’ll have portions that feature exquisite handmade animation, and maybe 2D elements. It feels weird talking about it, but I definitely want to do it.

You’ve mentioned that Paul Thomas Anderson is a great inspiration to you, particularly his film Magnolia. I love that guy. One quote and one quote alone springs to mind when I think of Magnolia… and I really, really wish it wouldn’t, haha. Tom Cruise, playing a self-help guru, stands up on stage at a sex seminar and recites his mantra:

“Respect the cock, and tame the cunt.”

Damn that Paul Thomas Anderson for getting away with shit like that. Genius. I forget my question now. Oh! Quick, off the top of your head, give us your favourite quote from a PTA film.

UMAR: Yes, PTA. He got away with a lot in that film, and that’s part of the wonder of it. That’s a tough question, but I’ll go with Punch Drunk Love when Adam Sandler says, “I’ve got a love in my life that makes me stronger than anything you can imagine.” That’s such a great line.

My last question isn’t a question at all. We here at SSDA want you to adapt "Naming" into a short film, and we all want to star in it. I’ll be the rooster, I really don’t care. Congratulations once again, Umar, strike while the iron is hot and keep churning out the genius.

UMAR: Ha ha, that would be something. Thanks a lot.

Make sure not to miss the first part of Umar's interview which can be read here. 

Umar Turaki is a writer and filmmaker living in Jos, Nigeria. His short fiction has appeared in publications such as AFREADA, Short Sharp Shots, and Ake Review. Umar can also be found on his blog and on twitter, @nenrota. 

Interview by Jason Mykl Snyman

'There’s definitely an immediacy inherent in film that I aim to achieve in my writing.' An Interview with Umar Turaki.

The unique style of "Naming" and the poignant subplots of the tale made many readers during the review and judging process curious about its creator. Jason Mykl Snyman tracked down Umar Turaki and picked his brains about the longlisted story's origin and asked him to speak to his writing process in general.

Migrations is available now in all good bookstores in South Africa. They will be happy to order it for you if they don't have it on the shelves yet. It is also currently available as an eBook. It will be published in the US and UK in September. 

Umar, thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to talk to SSDA about your work. First of all, I need to congratulate you on making it into our Migrations anthology. Your short story – "Naming" – was my own personal favourite from the collection, and that’s why I reached out to you. Tell us a little more about how this story took form in your mind.

UMAR: Thanks very much, Jason. I’m glad to hear you enjoyed the story so much. "Naming" began as a class assignment given by Binyavanga Wainaina during the Farafina Workshop last year. We were to write about a night gone horribly wrong. This was after he had challenged us to aspire to create a sense of wonder and take bigger risks with our stories. So I envisioned this story that had a very particular way in which the language flowed across the page, and that employed the idea of language and naming things as a kind of lens to explore the characters, to give them meaning and identity at the same time.

I decided to root it in an experience I had of being stranded en route to Calabar at midnight and all the anxieties and apprehensions that exposes you to. When you think of it, you really are at the mercy of anything. The experience of writing it was one in which I relied on instinct more than anything else, because I couldn’t have told you what exactly I was trying to achieve. I only hoped it would somehow make sense by the time it was done. In that manner I managed to churn out some 500 words before the time came to present it to the class. I really didn’t think anybody would get it or like it, because it didn’t feel finished, but I shared it anyway because I had run out of time and there was nothing else for me to present. When it got a big standing ovation from the whole class, I was genuinely confused and relieved at the same time. Nothing could have prepared me for such a response.

I found out about the SSDA Prize and the Migrations theme afterwards. I felt what I had already had the makings of something that would very much fit that theme, so I decided to expand the story and flesh out the characters a bit more.

In "Naming", five people, a foetus and a rooster in a small car with a flat tyre on a dark road in the middle of the night are about to meet their demise. Tell us a little more about these characters and what they mean to you.

UMAR: Each of these characters has at their core a piece of an experience that I’ve either lived or felt or come across in other people. It’s what drives them, whether you are speaking about dealing with temptation, or fighting a dark aspect of your nature and trying to rise above that, or trying to outlive your past, or having dreams that seem unachievable, or even being in love, or finding grace and peace at a point in your life that you never expected. They are all different people with different histories and goals brought together by the simple fact of this journey.

And for the moment, they all have the same goal, which is to reach their destination. So in a sense, they share this space and time together and that then becomes a foundation for them to have an even stronger connection, which is the sense of impending death and doom that flattens all their dreams and fears and all possibilities of the future, and so they all become equals in a cosmic sense. Even the rooster. At the end of the movie Barry Lyndon, the narrator makes the comment about how all the characters we’ve seen in the film, whether rich or poor, great or small, they are now equal because of death. I wanted to hit that note.

Have you ever entered a Short Story Day Africa competition before, for Feast, Famine & Potluck, Terra Incognita or Water? If so, tell us about it, and if not, what’s been holding you back?

UMAR: I’ve never entered any of those. Chief reason being that I didn’t even know such opportunities existed. 2016 was a big eye opener for me in the sense that I got to really discover and understand how rich and wide the world of African literature had become. Prior to that I was busy doggedly pursuing a career as a filmmaker. I honestly hadn’t been paying attention. I knew of the odd blog, like Brittle Paper, here and there, but nothing beyond that.

Participating in the Farafina Workshop ushered me into a whole new world and that was when I first heard of SSDA and what you guys have been up to. A smaller but closely related reason is that I had been working on short stories off and on for a few years, but my confidence as a literary writer was in pretty bad shape. I had gotten so many rejections I truly began to believe that perhaps I may never be able to write something worth publishing. But my Farafina experience came along and changed my outlook on things, in no small way.

I’m a film buff myself, and I enjoy writing which transports the reader right into the middle of it. In "Naming", you could turn your head from the page and the world you’ve created around these characters is still there – not just like watching an immersive film play out, but living it. Tell us a little about your writing process and how your love of film has influenced the way you write.

UMAR: Wow, thanks. There’s definitely an immediacy inherent in film that I aim to achieve in my writing, and perhaps part of that came from writing screenplays. A screenplay needs to be clear and light, it needs to flow effortlessly because that becomes a good indicator for how the movie itself might be experienced. I think that has seeped somewhat into my other writing. So even though I’m very interested in elevating language and making it do some wonderful, even unorthodox, things, I want the narrative to be easy to follow, I’m quite big on story.

Also, there’s a way certain films aren’t afraid to be messy, a way they capture the imperfections and messiness of life. If you watch a Paul Thomas Anderson or Robert Altman film or a film like The Wrestler you’ll get a sense of what I mean. I love that quality, I think I subconsciously try to bring it into what I write. It could be something as simple as having a character mispronounce a word or misuse a word that rings true to life because you’ve seen it happen before in the real world.

You’ve deliberately decided to work within the confines of Nigeria. Could you explain the psychology behind this decision and how it has affected your writing, specifically?

UMAR: I reached a point in my life where I wanted to stop writing stories that had white characters and protagonists and write about the people and places I had grown up around. I wanted to see the experiences of living in a place like Jos in all their nuances reflected in my work, and I wanted it to become a constant, whether I was writing a fantastical story or one set in a more realistic world. And I wanted to do all of this from my backyard, not some apartment in Brooklyn or London. I still do.

Things that happen to me on a daily basis seep into my writing, mundane, simple things. Like me waiting for a mechanic to finish fixing my car and watching him drink a plastic bag of “pure water” in one long swig, or watching one of his young workshop apprentices pick his nose and smear the phlegm on his dirty trousers. Really small things. They feed my creativity. So they are very important to my storytelling and I wanted to be planted right in the centre of this way of life and expose myself to things on an ongoing basis because it’s the reality I want my work to be about.

What’s next for Umar Turaki in the world of literature? What are you working on right now or do you have any forthcoming work?

UMAR: I’m working on a novella about a mysterious sickness that grips a small town and how a number of interconnected characters cope with the situation. It’s about beauty, somehow – I think. I think it’s a kind of fantasy, definitely speculative to some degree, though it has surprised me a couple of times and I can see the tone and nature of the story evolving in small ways. Apart from that, just dusting off old stories and seeing what one can salvage from those.

The two film buffs shifted gears a little in the second part of this interview which can be read here.

Umar Turaki is a writer and filmmaker living in Jos, Nigeria. His short fiction has appeared in publications such as AFREADA, Short Sharp Shots, and Ake Review. Umar can also be found on his blog and on Twitter, @nenrota.

Interview by Jason Mykl Snyman

 

#WriteTips: The 2016 Short Story Day Africa Prize Winners

Here are some writing tips from three of writers who stories stole the show in the collection. Migrations is available now in all good bookstores in South Africa. They will be happy to order it for you if they don't have it on the shelves. It will be published in the US and UK in September, and will be available as an eBook in all African territories in April.

Sibongile Fisher

Well, I wouldn’t call them writing tips (I’m no expert) but these things sure work for me:

• Write. Get over the blank page and write
• Before you write, read something
• After writing, edit at least three times (here take your time. Your feelings might change about certain parts of your story)
• Have someone go through your work and give you honest feedback
• Proofread, it is important.

TJ Benson

1. Embrace doubt. It is a good thing to feel too small for a work at first. If you are able to conquer it you will be rewarded with a feeling of victory bigger than any prize or acknowledgement. You will know in your heart that you are a true artist.
2. If your work does is not interesting enough for you it won’t be interesting enough for readers.
3. To help your work soar over any rejection hurdles and remain re-readable be merciless with tired sentences and clichés. Always seek to invent or pick on a unique way of seeing things.
4. Mean every sentence. Mean every omission
5. Listen to how people actually talk to sharpen your dialogue writing skills. I chase after my little cousins with my jotter and pen to capture their thought process.
6. Always write. In your head. On the bus. Before you go out to start the day. When you wake up from a nightmare. When you are angry with a friend. When you feel guilty in the throes of a moment because you know you will eventually write it. Rehearsal is one sure formula for success.

Megan Ross

Write. Build a body of work. Submit to as many publications as possible, enter competitions, and work with the feedback and criticism you are given. It doesn’t happen overnight but if you are writing consistently, even for an hour or half an hour before bedtime, or before you get up in the morning, you will hone your craft and start to see some motion. Also, make the time to write. People constantly complain about not having the time to write but something has to give; you have to sacrifice somewhere. Friday nights, Saturday mornings, an hour before work, two hours after dinner.

Watch interesting films, listen to music, listen to people!, walk as far as you possibly can – if it’s safe, explore your surrounds by foot if you can’t afford to travel. Moving the body is as important as focusing the mind.

And, most importantly, read. Read as much and as widely as you can. Read authors that you don’t like, that you do like; follow writers on social media. As much as you possibly can, squeeze reading time into your days and nights. And when you read, you will invariably want to write, so have a notebook and pen ready.

Oh and another thing: always carry a notebook and pen. Record every idea, no matter how small. It could work itself into a bestseller someday.  

"... I would hate to tell the same story twice." An Interview with TJ Benson.

TJ Benson served the Migrations judges quite the cup of "Tea" with his story of accidents, immigrants and love in a time of illegal labour, set in Sicily. "Tea" was the first runner up for the 2016 Short Story Day Africa Prize. Here he tells us about his influences, the relationship between photography and writing and what else he has brewing.

Migrations is available now in all good bookstores in South Africa. They will be happy to order it for you if they don't have it on the shelves. It will be published in the US and UK in September, and will be available as an eBook in all African territories in April.

It was a pleasant surprise to us during editing to find out that you had written one of the long listed (and later shortlisted stories) since you’ve been an active member of #WriterPrompt for some time. Could you tell us a bit about your writing journey?

TJ: The facilitators of #WriterPrompt have been amazing, I am grateful to Jason Mykl Snyman who tagged me in the group and to sharpened editors like Rachel Zadok and Tiah Beautement who nail you to your last line. I have been writing stories for a while now, but it was only recently that I decided to let people in.

First were my version of fairytales from the Ladybird books I read at age seven to ten which I wrote in a jotter my Dad bought for that specific purpose. It was meant to be a drawing book. Then my very own novella on alien invasion at twelve. I was borrowing R.L. Stine books by then so you can imagine. I felt alone because of a couple of losses I suffered before my teenage years so stories were a sort of escape for me. I read all passages in English textbooks and when I was done with the literature in the school curriculum, then I started reading the Oxford dictionary. Never finished it though. I was always looking for stories to hide in.

When I was done with the novels and newspapers in my library by senior secondary school (our library was small haha) I remembered I used to write when I was young and realized I had to create stories or face the real world. Eventually I settled for both. I used to be terrified of having readers though and I only write to this day because of all these stories in my head, nagging me and I fear I am the only one who can tell them the way I can.

In your story, “Tea”, two immigrants in Sicily meet for the first time in possibly the most awkward way ever, on a porn set. Circumstances lead them to attempting to make a life together without words, to love without a shared language. How did you come up with this unique premise?

TJ: Well I was in a church service back in school three years ago and the pastor was preaching about the possibility of communicating love in the absence of a verbal language. He mentioned it in passing and I began to think of two strangers forced to live together with no common language. My parents were of different ethnicities and so the only language they had in common was English. In the story, I wondered what if some people don’t have even English in common? It took three or four months for me to discover what I was writing about and as with most of my writing I didn’t know how it would end. So that gave me a sort of thrill.
 

Lorrie Moore, another short story writer is often quoted as saying: “A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.” As a photographer and a writer do you agree with this observation at all? And does your photographic work ever influence your writing or vice versa?

TJ: On the morning of my ninth birthday my dad woke me up with a Kodak film camera. He was a photography enthusiast all his life and even though he never did it professionally, he documented most of my growing up on film. I was already writing stories by then so I sought to capture things I had not learnt to capture eloquently in my stories, on film. Violent motion to be precise like Jackie Chan’s flying kicks and the action poses of Charlie’s Angels. I made my primary schoolmates model for me. I have used the images of other photographers as prompts, in fact the black and white images of Sunmi Smart-Cole in a collection owned by my father influenced me at a point, forced me to forget colorful metaphors and invoke objects in solitude in prose and picture.

An image of Bi Kidude lying on the grass and staring at the sky recently served as a prompt for a story I just finished working on so I would agree with Lorrie Moore, a picture indeed can contain a short story. Can contain a novel in fact. But being influenced by myself across mediums suggests a kind of introverted sexuality, it would be masturbating to an image of myself in the mirror if you would pardon me. Once I tell a story whether in picture or a written story I abandon it. I am done. The world is already laden with many stories there's no need for me to repeat myself no matter the medium. I fear doing that would make the story lose its substance. My photography has never influenced my writing or vice versa because I would hate to tell the same story twice.

Are short stories just a stepping stone in your career to long form fiction? Or do you think you’d like to keep writing them? If so what attracts you to the them?

TJ: Thank you for this question. I am a short story baby. I have read more short stories than novels and to be frank have been more moved by them. Short stories don’t have time for ‘fillers’ or unnecessary subplots. The only kind of long form fiction I enjoy are the kinds that are that way as well, without unnecessary detail. When I was grooming myself to write my first novel the available work at my disposal were the shorts of Eudora Welty, O. Henry, F. Scott Fitzgerald and several others.

Even though I am aware of market economics in the publishing industry I believe in the substance dictating the form and so I respect the forms my stories want to be told in whether it's a novel or shorts. I hate the idea of short stories being a ‘stepping stone’ to long form. Thank God for Alice Munro and her Nobel at least the form is more respected. I would have stuck to short story writing, if not for the novel that I’m working on that wouldn’t just behave and be a short story.

Yes. Thank God for Alice Munro. What are you currently busy with? Can we expect any new writing from you soon?

TJ: Sadly (for me) I write fewer short stories these days because I am trying to finish up a the stubborn novel I mentioned above, titled ‘The Madhouse’ at the Ebedi Writers Residency which I got picked for in January. I'm currently in talks with a Nigerian publisher about my collection of Afro SF short stories, We Won't Fade into Darkness which got shortlisted for the Saraba Manuscript Project Prize last year.  

On TJ’s Bedside Table

I am always re-reading Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, Gabriel Marcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, and any of my short story collections. I take a little dose of these books every now and then so they can be found under my pillow but I’m trying to be more organized . So I’m reading Zadie Smith’s Swing Time at the moment.

TJ Benson is a Nigerian short story writer and creative photographer whose work has appeared in online journals like Jalada Africa, Munyori Journal, Brittle Paper, Praxis Magazine, Sentinel Literary Magazine and in print magazines and anthologies like Paragram UK, ANA Annual Review, Contemporary Literary Review India and Transition Magazine. His photography chapbook, 'Rituals' was published as a downloadable PDF on Sankofa Magazine in 2015 and his collection of Afro-Sci-Fi short stories, We Won't Fade Into Darkness was shortlisted for the Saraba Manuscript Prize in 2016. He won the Amab-HBF Prize and his short story ‘Tea’ is the first runner up for the 2016 Short Story Day Africa Prize. He was mentioned twice in Expound Journal’s Best of 2016 and once in Brittle Paper’s Top 31 of 2016. He is currently a Writer-In-Residence at the Ebedi Residency Iseyin, Nigeria.

Interview by Efemia Chela a.k.a @efemiachela 

"I have an ungovernable imagination that shocks me." An Interview with Sibongile Fisher.

Sibongile Fisher is the winner of the 2016 Short Story Day Africa Prize. The judges and readers alike were gripped by her dramatic story of family secrets and how two sisters are both bound and divided by them. We sat down with her to find out the inspiration behind her award-winning story as well as her experience of migration. 

How did you come to writing? And why short stories?

SIBONGILE: I started off writing poetry in high school, round about the time my reality changed. I needed a way to let it all out, to bleed and poetry became that thing for me. A place where I could cough out whatever that was on my chest no with worries about whether or not I excused myself. I've never stopped writing since. With the joy of writing poetry came the love of reading. However the stories I was reading had little to do with my reality and so I started writing about the people I knew.

I have a bad memory, so for everyone who passed on in my family, I started writing how I remember them, short stories they told me, things they did or loved doing and moments that struck me, how they reacted to things and sometimes how they said certain phrases. I then stopped (for no particular reason). I continued writing and performing poetry but I had stopped writing stories.

In 2014 I had the opportunity to work on a short story for the Fundza Mentoring Young Writers Program. The experience really shaped my way of writing. Needless to say I started writing and I haven't stopped since.

Why short stories? Well there is something about the short story that keeps a writer energized, the limited word count yet the elaborate need for a story to be complete, to leave the reader full. The short story is like chocolate, you can have more than one a day and that is what I love about them.

The opening line of “A Door Ajar” is pretty shocking as is the story that unfolds - of a divided family and how they are bound to an ancient custom. Do you intend to shock with your writing?

SIBONGILE: I wouldn’t say I intend to shock, however I want to address the absurdity of some of the traditions and customs that happen behind closed doors, that we all know of but are unspoken of, the things that are known as family secrets. When writing, I find it hard to make beautiful that which reads as ugly or make ugly that which reads as beautiful. I try to keep my text as plain as possible so that it appears as it is. On the other hand, I have an ungovernable imagination that shocks me. Some of the things I dream of are weird and gory and scary and I love adding these to my writing. I think the shock element comes from the whole, “she didn’t just do that, did she?” which is very intentional. I love characters that push boundaries that go where humans are afraid to go, do unspeakable things and find these things normal. I am energized by such characters.

The opening line is based on a tradition that is rumoured to be practiced by members of the secret church.

How did “A Door Ajar” - the narrative, the story, the characters - come into being?

SIBONGILE: The story ended up completely different from how I had imagined it to be. I wanted to tell a speculative story that explored the practicality of myths and religious practices. When I decided to enter the competition, I attended the Flow workshop and knew that there was no going back so I had to write it. Using my initial sub-themes and the overall theme of Migrations I started writing. I wrote about the thing I knew most, my birthplace. I thought of the people there, the people I grew up with, my family and the families of my childhood friends.

I knew that I wanted to tell a story about women, so my characters had to be women. As I was writing, the characters shaped themselves, I wanted to keep them close to reality as possible. I wanted the reader to recognize their grandmother, their aunt, their sister and even their mother in one of the characters and because of this, I had to keep the story as close to reality as possible, with the elements of speculation of course. When reading the story, anyone who has had to ‘migrate’ from the rurals to the city will recognize the story and relate to it.

One of the story’s strengths for me was the way it explored the tension between tradition and modernity. Could you speak more about how you created this aspect of the story?

SIBONGILE: The theme was Migrations and there is a migration that happens in South Africa every year between November and January.  A large number of the rural population leaves their homes to find work in the cities and during those months they travel back home for the holidays. I too partake in this migration when I visit my birthplace.  It is as though there are two separate eras in which the City and the Rural Areas exist. In the rural areas traditions and customs have a strong hold and the people who live in there practice these traditions and customs religiously where as in the city, pop culture and modernity is forever evolving.

I wanted to explore these two worlds and see what would happen if they met under the same household so that is why I created two sisters born in the same place, one changed because she left for the city and another changed she stayed. I also spent a lot of time in Braamfontein in 2014/15 and I was intrigued by the transition that students make over the time that they first arrive in the city and when they have now comfortably become city dwellers. Their personality, interests, style, way of thinking and lifestyle changes and the contrasting shock and tension that must surely happen when they go back home fascinates me. I wanted this to be a central theme throughout the story as it is something that I struggle with. The constant push and pull between tradition and modernity.

Congratulations on your win! What did it mean to you to win the overall prize?

SIBONGILE: After giving birth to my son, I felt lost. I was not sure if I wanted to continue writing. I entered the competition as a gift to myself. I didn’t think I would win, let alone get long listed. The prize gave me a sense of confidence, in myself and in my writing. I am fired up to continue writing, to improve and better my writing. The prize meant that I was worth it, that my work was worth it. I still pinch myself hey. I, with no academic background in creative writing, with no long track record, won one of the most prestigious short story prizes in Africa. It is the stuff dreams are made of.

Are you working on any stories at the moment? Can we expect anything new from you in the near future?  

SIBONGILE: Yes, I am working on two new stories and an essay… I am working on getting published more and hopefully winning more (lol). It hasn’t been easy writing as I am currently a full-time ‘new’ mom to a very curious and active toddler but these stories haunt me and I have to get them out, one way or another.

On Sibongile’s Bedside Table

Well, I was in between two books; Rachel’s Blue by Zakes Mda and Tar Baby by Toni Morrison when I came across Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions and because I’ve been meaning to read the book for years now, the others had to be paused.

Migrations is available in all good bookstores in South Africa. They will be happy to order it for you if they don't have it on the shelves. It will be published in the US and UK in September, and will be available as an eBook in all African territories in April.

Sibongile "Gratitude" Fisher is a poet, emerging writer and drama facilitator from Johannesburg, South Africa. She holds a BCom in Marketing Management, a higher certificate in Performing Arts and wishes to pursue an MA in Creative Writing. She is the co-founder of The Raising Zion Foundation, an arts organisation that focuses on promoting literature, poetry and the performing arts in high schools.

She is also the winner of the 2016 Short Story Day Africa Prize for her short story “A Door Ajar”. Her short story “A Sea of Secrets” written for high school learners was published by Fundza under their mentorship program and appears in their It Takes Two! anthology.  She enjoys a good laugh, homemade burgers and plans to see more of her work, especially short stories, published in 2017.

Interview by Efemia Chela a.k.a. @efemiachela