I was four when I announced my ambition to write, eight when I began publishing such claims.

So often, literature about African people is conflated with literature about African politics, as if the state were somehow of greater import or interest than the individual.

Being a twin, and being my sister's twin, is such a defining part of my life that I wouldn't know how to be who I am, including a writer, without that being somehow at the centre.

As a young woman, I had been seeking experience, knowledge, truth, the stuff writers need in their work, but when the artist actually kicked in, I came to understand that in this romantic relationship I was not free to be myself, or to find myself, in order to begin the true work I needed to do.