Five Minutes With Ifeoma Chukwu, On Writing the Coast

Ifeoma Chukwu's third book, What the River Kept, is — like nearly everything she's written — set on the coast she grew up on, between Bonny and Port Harcourt. We asked her why she keeps going back.

"I don't think I keep going back," she said. "I think I never left, on the page. I've lived in five cities since I was eighteen and none of them have shown up in a manuscript yet. I'm not sure they will."

She's resistant to the idea that this is a limitation. "People ask if I'll ever write somewhere else, the way you'd ask someone if they'll ever get a real job. The coast isn't a setting I keep reusing because I'm out of ideas. It's the only place I've ever understood well enough to be honest about. I'd rather write one place truthfully for thirty years than ten places I'm only pretending to know."

What the River Kept took her nearly four years, partly because of how much research went into the dialect work. "I wanted the sisters to sound like they were actually from there, not like a writer's idea of there. That took longer than the plot did, honestly. The plot I had in a weekend. The voice took years."

Asked what's next, she's vague in the specific way that usually means she already knows. "Same coast. Different decade. That's all I'll say."