Iko Conversations: Gabrielle Harry. 

For Iko Conversations, I spoke to Gabrielle Emem Harry, a Nigerian speculative fiction writer. We spoke while Gabrielle ate her beans (she said I must tell everyone it banged), and there was a lot of laughter, but her insights were a gift, and I’m very pleased to share her thoughts on writing, speculative fiction and what the future holds.  

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Questions by Albert Nkereuwem

AN: So I want us to start at the beginning, your name. Why Emem?

Gabrielle: Because it is my name. 

AN: Fair enough. We’ll go into the questions we have for you. Where it all start? When would you say the writing seed was planted?

Gabrielle: I like it when they ask this question, and writers are always like, “Ever since I was a child, I wrote stories,” and then there’s me. I did not write shit as a child, at least not anything tangible. I started writing in 2020, and the reason…don’t put this in the interview (I was later permitted to put this in the interview). 2020 was like the peak of my BTS stan era. BTS was dropping Map of the Soul: 7, and I was delirious cus I’d been up so I could watch the Black Swan Art Film the moment it dropped; it wasn't even BTS, it was some European dance troupes performance in some abandoned warehouse. At the beginning of the video there’s this quote, “A dancer dies twice - once when they stop dancing, or something like that (we found the video, the quote was, “A dancer dies twice - once when they stop dancing and the first death is more painful”). I was like “real” That’s so deep, and then the song now completed the vibe because the lyric translations were like I’m living in dread of the moment when my heart stops pumping, and the art loses its appeal… (I decided here we had to add it to the interview)

I said wow, lemme not die before my time- I’ll start writing. 

Also, In primary school, I read a lot of authors; some were inappropriate for my age, but I read them. I read Flora Nwapa, Chinua Achebe, Cyprian Ekwensi and the Lit Fic guys. I feel like my taste in books when I was younger was much more refined. They were my grandpa’s books. When I was thirteen, I had a YA phase, but I never read anything that was like, wow, I want to write, until my book club recommended What It Means When A Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah. I saw things done in writing that I didn't know were allowed to do. If this was what writing could be, maybe I wanted to do it. That, and the delirium of Black Swan? I opened my first Google doc that day. 

AN: 2020 is a long time ago-

Gabrielle: Don’t calculate the time, abeg. It makes me dizzy. 

AN: So you’ve been writing for a while now. Do you now consider yourself bound to any genre? What is your writing defined as? 

Gabrielle: I wouldn’t box myself o, but it’s like they put my picture in a bottle, wrote speculative fiction on the back, tied it in red thread and buried it under a tree. Most of my work, even if it starts as something else, bends towards horror, or fantasy, or sci-fi. The last story I wrote is actually not spec fic, and I’ve nevergone that far without veering into spec fic. 

AN: What is Spec Fic to you?

Gabrielle: I don’t know if I can answer that fully. There’s the standard answer - Spec Fic is anything that falls into fantasy, sci-fi, horror, anything in between or a mixture of any or all of the categories. There’s this distinction drawn between speculative and literary fiction , but I think… I know that speculative fiction can be written in a “literary” style. 

 You can write a story about a mermaid contemplating suicide and have it be character-driven, and have the prose be lyrical and whatever else Literary fiction is meant to be. I feel like African writers prove this point time and time again. There are some amazing spec fic stories that I cannot distinguish from literary fiction based on the quality of writing. Wait, what was the question? 

AN: What is Spec Fic to you?

Gabrielle: I’ve answered it. 

AN: Lmao, okay. I have another question. While literature is, to writers, an avenue for expression, there’s the aspect of it that makes it something African parents won’t allow us to study. Do you think you could build a life around your art? What does pursuing writing actively mean for you? 

Gabrielle: I cannot build my life around art o. One of my greatest fears is writing for a living, I was thinking about it before I started eating this beans. Writing is stressful, and I’d suffer. It would change the quality of what I choose to write and how I choose to write it. I feel like I would come up with an idea and be like: Is this good enough to go out there? Can this one sell? Even down to a sentence level, I actively use Nigerian English in my writing even though I know that it is not the easiest thing for Western audiences and magazines to accept, but I do it because that is how I speak, and that is how I want to write. I get the pressure to cater to the Western gaze and audience, but at the end of the day, nobody sent me work when it comes to this writing thing, and I can do whatever I want. The day I stop being able to do whatever I want is the day I stop enjoying writing, and what even is the point? 

That is why it cannot be what I am depending on for my daily bread, because you cannot carry this attitude to what is feeding you. 

AN: Last year, you were a Recipient of the Literary Laddership for Emerging African Authors; how has that shaped your craft, and what did you come away with?

Gabrielle: It has given me incredible insights into what publishing entails. I am so grateful for spaces like that, and I am grateful to Suyi Davies and his team for putting that together because, as an African writer on the continent, you are pretty much isolated from the publishing industry- you don't know anything. You need someone to tap your shoulder and tell you ‘come and see o’. For things like this, you need to follow who know road, and initiatives like LLEAA are that - someone tapping your shoulder. It was a great experience; Suyi had so much great advice and so many recommendations about how to go about editing, querying and other publishing insights. Also, they gave us money, which was great. 

AN: You wrote something for the fellowship. How do you feel about the work borne from it?

Gabrielle: I managed to finish…finish is a very strong word. Complete also sounds serious...

AN: Lay the foundation?

Gabrielle: I managed to lay the foundation for what I am calling a novella. I’m still deceiving myself, because it will have to be longer. I was writing at least five hundred words a day, and it was rubbish. But the process allowed me to complete a first draft. I saw this quote once, “The first draft is you telling the story to yourself.” I needed this opportunity to tell this story to myself, and I got some helpful tips on how to structure the story I was telling, and to figure out the how of my story, and I would not have had that opportunity without the fellowship. I am looking forward to brushing it up into something I can present to the public and not be ashamed. 

AN: Speaking of stories, we all pretend like we don’t have a favourite, but-

Gabrielle: A Name is a Plea and a Prophecy (Published in Strange Horizons Issue 14)

AN: She said it!

Gabrielle: I don’t pretend. I say it every time. That is my favourite thing I have ever written. 

AN: What do you like about the story? How did it come to you?

Gabrielle: I was reading Amos Tutuola’s The Palmwine Drinkard, and in the story he goes to Death’s house. I wondered if anyone had gone to death before and after him. The first line came to me…

Kuyom stood at Death’s door..

A thing about me is I hate main characters, not just the ones I write, but most protagonists. I’ve hated or strongly disliked my MCs, and usually, how it goes is I start writing a story about a character who is literally just a vehicle for the story, and then I introduce a character I actually like as a secondary character and they derail/make the story. I was writing Plea and Prophecy and when I finished, there was no secondary character that I introduced because I was bored. I just kept thinking Kuyom was very cool- a character I would search for TikTok edits of after finishing a story, which, to me, is how you know something is good. The character has to stay with you, as they feel like a real person. I also like the antagonist, Adeh - yes, he has killed and maimed and destroyed lives, but he was the best guy around!

AN and GH: What murderrrr? (There’s a TikTok sound. We are normal people, I promise)

AN: Let’s actually talk about your process. Do you have a process? Say yes or no first.

Gabrielle: Process is a strong word.

AN: How so?

Gabrielle: I don’t know if this qualifies as a process. Initially, I get an idea, and I write it in my notes app, where it will marinate for anything from a day to two years. The day the spirit leads, I will pick the line, or the description or feeling I want to capture and think about it, then I’ll write. I usually force myself to write five hundred words a day, with a minimum word count in mind, like two thousand or three thousand, so I don't quit. When the first draft is done, I let it be, and then I come back to it and edit and start submitting. I get rejected like three hundred times, and if I am lucky, I get an acceptance. I do find I write best when I wake up very early, at like four am. 

AN: I know we can go on for hours if we want, but I will ask one more question. Are there any writers you look up to?

For sure. I have a long list. First of all, our collective oga in the game, Eloghosa Osunde. There are so many others; Pemi Aguda has a book coming out; pre-order Ghostroots and tell your friends. I mentioned Lesley Nneka Arimah earlier so thank her. I like Helen Oyeyemi’s work as well; I appreciate stories where shit just happens and the readers just have to accept it, and I learned it from her, especially her short story collection, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours. I have so many writers I look up to; Suyi Davies Okungbowa, D.S FalowoWole TalabiThere’s also Somto Ihezue, who I love reading, and I don't know if you’ve heard of this guy; he’s a big name. 

AN: Who?

Gabrielle: Nkereuwem Albert (Me. She was talking about me); There’s this thing he does, this specific brand of urban fantasy that I can’t crack, but I appreciate it. Jesutomisin Ipinmonye is brilliant: on a sentence level and thematic level, he’s incredible at crafting such visceral stories, emotionally resonant stories. Chiamaka Okike (at this point, GH brought out her phone to read what she wrote about Okike’s work). Chiamaka reaches into the human heart and mind and finds the unspoken, the unquantifiable and the unutterable, boils them into words and tosses them onto the page. 

These writers inspire me, and I cannot wait for what they come up with next. 

AN: So what’s next for Gabrielle Emem’s Harry?

Gabrielle: I don’t know. I’m still writing short stories, but I’m also working on something longer at the moment. I also want to try out creative nonfiction - I attended a great workshop taught by Mofiyinfoluwa Okupe that planted a seed in me and I want to see how that goes. 

….

Gabrielle Emem Harry is a brilliant Nigerian speculative fiction writer. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in magazines such as Strange Horizons, Solarpunk, Omenana, and Kenga, with her work also featuring in PRIDE: An Anthology of Diverse Speculative Fiction. She was also a recipient of the 2023 Literary Laddership for Emerging African Authors. 

You can read her work on Iko Africa here.