Today on the podcast I’m talking with Yewande Omotoso.
Yewande is an architect, with a masters in creative writing from the University of Cape Town. Her debut novel ‘Bomboy’ (2011 Modjaji Books), won the South African Literary Award First Time Author Prize. Her short stories include ‘How About The Children’ (Kalahari Review), ‘Things Are Hard’ (2012 Caine Prize Anthology), ‘Fish’ (The Moth Literary Journal) and ‘The Leftovers’ (One World Two). Yewande was a 2015 Miles Morland Scholar.
Her second novel ‘The Woman Next Door’ (2016 Chatto and Windus) was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award and longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Literature Prize.
Her third novel is ‘An Unusual Grief’ (Cassava Republic), which is described as a ‘tender and essential meditation on the inheritance of loss’ and a ‘a bittersweet and gripping story.’ As one reviewer says on the cover fold ‘Omotoso’s prose is sharp and precise as it pierces the exterior and allows you to peel back the layers of humanity on the flawed and fragile characters in an Unusual Grief.’ The story details multiple forms of parenting and motherhood, as well as how at times we must reparent ourselves to become whole.
Yewande is the mother of twins who are two.
So today I’ll be talking with Yewande about feminism, motherhood, writing and unusual grief. Welcome Yewande.
