An Interview with Ayesha Harruna Attah

I immerse myself in research, use material I’ve unearthed and my imagination to weave together and create stories.

I can read ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs (painstakingly).

I am reading Eventide by Therese Bohman, by Other Press, my publishers, who were kind enough to give me a box of books when I visited them in February. It’s a book about an art history professor in her 40s, post break-up, who is left wondering if she made the right decision pursuing academia instead of listening to her biological clock. The cover – of a woman’s face barely visible behind a splash of pink – is what first drew me to it.

I loved everything by Roald Dahl. His books were such fun and jam-packed with unforgettable characters and inventive storylines. My favourites were Matilda and The BFG.

When I was eight, I had a series about one of my teddy bears. Around the same time, my friends and I wrote a story called The Ring, but I can’t, for the life of me, recall what it was about.

Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston. I bought it because I’m deep in research about pre-colonial West Africa, and also because I have written about internal slavery in Africa. Cudjoe Lewis, this book’s protagonist, experienced indigenous slavery before smuggled illegally into Alabama. He was one of the last known survivors of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade to the United States.

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, because she kindly urges one to just begin.

The Eloquence of the Scribes by Ayi Kwei Armah: This book is written by one of my mentors. In addition to writing openly and beautifully about his life, he breaks down the writing process so clearly, that he makes it seem easy to do the work.

The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White: This book teaches how to write tightly.

The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis. The perfect one sentence short story. Short stories about life’s minutiae. Lydia Davis can write about any and everything. When I’m stuck, I leaf through her book and one page or another, I stumble on a story that guides me out of my rut.

Vodun in Coastal Benin by Dana Rush. It was gifted to me this winter by dear friends who know I’ll take anything that helps me piece together life in pre-colonial West Africa.

Season of the Shadow by Léonora Miano.

Getting my two-year-old to love books as much as I do.

I write when my son is away in school, from about 9 to midday, and during his afternoon naps. I usually scribble down notes in a notebook and let them sit. When I can’t stop thinking about the idea or character or theme, it means I am ready to expand the idea into a book. I pull up an Excel sheet, and fill the cells with a vague idea of a plot, who the characters are, what years the book will span, and what I will need to research for each chapter. The spreadsheet is a way for me to keep track of time, people, places, and themes.

The next step is research, which involves reading books, journals, articles or browsing through photos, lithographs, and maps for surprising details. Sometimes, I’ll have to conduct interviews or visit the places I’m writing about.

When I feel like I have absorbed enough of a place and time, I face the blank page and write whatever comes to mind, using the material that my research unearthed, as well as my own idea of getting from point A to B. The next day, I begin again, going from point B to C or J to K. I can start in the middle of the book, go back to the beginning, or begin with the end. I don’t usually work linearly, because I have the Excel sheet to guide me. I do this until I have the story down from beginning to end.

When I’m done with that very rough draft, then the real work of crafting the novel begins.

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

1. Read, read, and read. 2. Write a first draft that you don’t show to any one and from that draft, rewrite till you’re sick of the novel.

The Lady with the Little Dog and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov. Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun by Sarah Ladipo Manyika. The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi, House of Stone by Novuyo Rosa Tshuma, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, and No Sweetness Here by Ama Ata Aidoo.

The Untelling by Tayari Jones. She gave me a signed copy over ten years ago, at a festival in Ghana, which I ended up giving to my mum and sister. It got lost on the shelves in my parents’ home and I only picked it up again recently. I am giddy about finally getting to it.