Lesley Nneka Arimah

Lesley Nneka Arimah (born 13 October 1983 in London, United Kingdom) is a Nigerian writer. She has been described as "a skillful storyteller who can render entire relationships with just a few lines of dialogue" and "a new voice with certain staying power." She is the winner of the 2015 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for Africa, the 2017 O. Henry Prize, the 2017 Kirkus Prize, and the 2019 Caine Prize for African Writing.

Quotes

• When I think of what literature can do, and I think of the ways that literature has changed minds and opened imaginations, I want to say that we African writers must centre the African gaze.
  • Quoted from her acceptance speech (9 February 2020)

• A reader comes to the page and essentially learns the rules of this world, not because the rules are being told to them but because the rules are being broken. Via the consequences of the rules being broken, the reader comes to understand what the rules are.
  • An Interview with Lesley Nneka Arimah on Craft, Courage, and Creativity

• There is nothing inherently wrong with not knowing as much as people think you should or not knowing everything. There is no need to feel any sort of shame.
  • Making suggestions in terms of providing or excluding contextual information

• There needs to be something that matters to you, even if you’re inventing this impossible world filled with raffia babies.
  • How she chooses what a particular thing is

• A world where women must remain naked until they are married; there are complications.
  • Describing her winning short story Skinned in one sentence (16 July 2019)

• So why not be as deliberate in creating myth as those who came before us, so that those who come after us can better understand our concerns and our cultural obsessions
  • Some present-day concerns that preoccupy and permeate into her fiction (July 2019)

• So it’s not motivation to continue, but reward for work already completed. That’s the most important thing to keep in mind, that the work comes first.
  • Her definition of prizes (16 July 2019)

Quotes about

• For too long, the voices and visions for our future have been provided, for the most part, by and from a culturally European (if not Eurocentric) perspective. However, there is change afoot. The works of Octavia E. Butler are becoming mainstream, and names like Nnedi Okorafor and Lesley Nneka Arimah are bringing much needed flavor to the narratives that help shape our future.
  • LeVar Burton Forward to New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color edited by Nisi Shawl (2019)