#CRPressXAke2018: Day one; Ayesha Haruna Attah

Ayesha

Editors Note: 

As part of our coverage at the 2018 Ake Books and Arts Festival, we have collaborated with authors under the Cassava Republic Press to give you a first hand look at what the festival is like for a writer. Ghanaian writer Ayesha HarunaAttah, whose new novel ‘The 100 Wells of Salaga‘ was released this year, opens the series and she is a delight to read.


I have looked on with longing at the Ake Arts and Book Festival over the years, and my turn is finally here. After sulking that it wasn’t going to be held at Abeokuta, I let things be and soaked in my mounting excitement. So far, so good.

Sade Adeniran, Jennifer Makumbi, Bayo Olupohunda, and I visited the Clegg Girls Junior and Senior High School in Surulere this morning. Lagos traffic didn’t fail: it was as congested as ever, and added into the mix were a driver who stopped every five minutes to ask other clueless people for directions and torrential rain. The downpour didn’t ease up for the first fifteen minutes of our talk with the senior high students, but we still had a wonderful conversation with them about the books they are reading, our sources of inspiration, the challenges of writing, and the language to write in. One student was especially poetic. “Our brain is like an ocean,” she said. The junior high students also came prepared and asked about what qualities are needed to write, why we write, and one even asked, “Don’t you get tired?”

In the evening, we attended the launch of Ouida Books, watched the moving and powerful Wanjiru Kamuyu, and do what writers do when they gather: merry-make.

Ayesha Harruna Attah

My new novel, The Hundred Wells of Salaga, is out in the UK. Order here or here.

Pre-order the US edition here.

 

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