In this interview, Elom discusses how his experiences as an immigrant helped inspire his new political thriller, Blindspot in America, what he learned in the process of publishing the novel, and more.
News & Review Type: News
Writer’s Digest spotlights Elom K. Akoto, author of BLINDSPOT IN AMERICA
Reader’s Entertainment Magazine interviews Elom Akoto, author of BLINDSPOT IN AMERICA
Today, we are welcoming author Elom Akoto to the blog. First, tell our readers a bit about yourself. Where you’re from, where you live? Is writing your full-time job?
I’m from Togo, a small country in West Africa, but I now live in Omaha, Nebraska where I teach French full-time at a high school and ESL part-time at a community college. I also like to write.
Rachel León from Chicago Review of Books interviews Esinam Bediako, author of BLOOD ON THE BRAIN
Readers often talk about liking a novel (or not) because they connected to the protagonist (or didn’t). Reasons, sometimes inexplicable, for connecting—or not—vary from one reader to the next. That said, I immediately loved and connected with twenty-four-year-old Ghanaian American Akosua, the protagonist and narrator of Esinam Bediako’s thrilling debut novel, Blood on the Brain.
Akosua’s status as a grad student is a bit hazy, as is her love life. And then she falls and hits her head, adding to the haziness. As she deals with the aftermath of a concussion, Akosua explores her identity, family, and culture. I devoured Blood on the Brain, hungry for Bediako’s compelling voice and this rich meditation on memory, history, and imagination.
The Root interviews Aliah Wright, author of NOW YOU OWE ME
Black Writer On How To Write An Alluring Villain and a Dynamic Black, Female Hero
Aliah Wright details how to get started writing a book and creating twin serial killers and a Black Hero in her debut novel, ‘Now You Owe Me.’
LitHub features excerpt from Esinam Bediako’s BLOOD ON THE BRAIN
The following is from Esinam Bediako’s Blood on the Brain. Bediako is a Ghanaian American writer from Detroit. She holds a BA in English from Columbia University, an MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College, and an MAT in Secondary English from University of Southern California. A finalist for the Porter House Review Editor’s Prize, the Frontier Global Poetry Prize, and North American Review’s Terry Tempest Williams Prize, Esinam has been a high school English teacher and administrator.
The last time I saw my father I was seven, and I don’t remember much about his leaving. But I do remember the last time I heard from him. Sweet sixteen, or close to it. A week before my birthday, I found out my prep school friends were throwing a surprise party for me; I accidentally overheard the girls discussing the ideal time to call my mom to coordinate the details.
KTVZ features Kristen Millares Young and her novel SUBDUCTION
OSU-Cascades is hosting a Wednesday, Sept. 25 reading and book-signing event featuring Kristen Millares Young, an award-winning author, journalist and essayist whose latest novel, Subduction, is contemporary story set in the Northwest.
Vox Populi features two poems from Elise Paschen’s BLOOD WOLF MOON
Letters
Ruby-Throated, she
undaunted, taps the porch screen,
types tiny missives.
~~~
The Best American Poetry features “Advice on Burning Manuscripts” from Gaylord Brewer’s BEFORE THE STORM TAKES IT AWAY
Part 2: Advice on Revision and the Pleasure of Burning Manuscripts with Gaylord Brewer [by Nin Andrews]
In my last post, I talked about Zoom classes, about advice (or lack thereof) that I have offered to MFA students. I decided to add a part 2 because I avoided the topic of revision. It’s my least favorite subject. Of course, students always ask if I revise and how and . . .
I wish I didn’t have to revise. I am unspeakably envious of poets like Frank O’Hara, who was famous for not revising. Of A. R. Ammons [pictured, left] who could write a poem like “City Limits” in one sitting. Of Max Jacob who composed in a notebook while walking through Paris and wrote: “The ideas I found in this way seemed sacred to me and I didn’t change a comma. I believe that prose which comes directly from meditation is a prose which has the form of the brain and which it is forbidden to touch.” (From an interview with John Ashbery in the Paris Review)
Alas. I revise and revise up to the last minute before a poem or book is published, and then I keep on revising. As to advice?
Five South Journal’s Jennifer Allen interviews E.P. Tuazon, author of A PROFESSIONAL LOLA
E.P. Tuazon’s forthcoming collection of Filipino-American short stories, A Professional Lola (Red Hen Press, 2024), offers a fresh take on identity and explores what it means to be an ever-evolving character in our own stories.
Through the extraordinary, we learn from family members, friends, strangers, protagonists, and even Bigfoot that identity is complex and fluid.
Our sense of self depends on who we’re with, the country we’re in, and the lessons we learn. It can change when life throws us a curveball and challenges everything we thought was true about ourselves and our relationships. It can also change when we embrace what we’ve known, no matter how late in life.
In “Blood Magic,” the passive wife of a neglectful husband seeks escape in a spell-casting women’s group that comes with its hierarchy. Brother and sister twins find their extra-close relationship threatened in “Bellow Below” when a third person is thrown into the mix. “Carabao” tells a tale through the eyes of a young boy whose grandfather finds peace after a dramatic transformation.
E.P. Tuazon is a Filipino-American writer in LA whose work has appeared in several publications. I had the privilege of interviewing them about life, the writing craft, and their diverse cast of characters whose stories will linger with you long after you’ve closed the book.
Kwento-Kwento Podcast Interviews E.P. Tuazon, author of A PROFESSIONAL LOLA
Ep. 66: That Time My Lola Convinced Mormons To Do Her Chores
Special guest E.P. Tuazon joins us to talk about that time their lola convinced Mormons to do her chores plus a conversation about writing their latest short story collection THE PROFESSIONAL LOLA, being banned from traveling to the Philippines, the perfect Kaldereta recipe, and the twisted yet brilliant mind of Haruki Murakami.
Verse Daily features Jason Schneiderman’s poem CLICKBAIT
Today’s poem is by Jason Schneiderman
Click Bait
Today’s distraction: an article on how to avoid distraction.
Turn off notifications. Clear your desktop. Divide things
into what you are working on now and what you will
work on later. Schedule the day. Use a timer. Reward yourself
when you finish a task. Spoiler alert: It won’t work.
Runner Magazine interviews Esinam Bediako, author of BLOOD ON THE BRAIN
Ghanaian American author Esinam Bediako has been honored for her debut novel Blood on the Brain, set to launch in September of 2024 in Brooklyn, New York. Born and raised in Metro-Detroit, Bediako’s story of a young woman, Akosua, who is also a Ghanaian American from Detroit, highlights challenges of growing into adulthood in the United States. In addition to typical romantic and educational pursuits, the story’s protagonist asks difficult questions about identity and belonging. Here, we present a conversation with Esinam Bediako about her experience writing the novel, and how her own life experiences played a role in story and character development.
R: Esinam, thank you for joining me to talk about your new book Blood on the Brain. I enjoyed it very much, and appreciate the level of intimacy that the story holds, as it is told primarily as internal thoughts of the main protagonist, Akosua. As the author, how do you relate to her character?
ELLE Magazine features Juliana Lamy’s YOU WERE WATCHING FROM THE SAND
“Juliana Lamy’s You Were Watching from the Sand, a story collection with such range and beauty that you need to sit with each one for a while.”
World Literature Today features an Interview between Esinam Bediako and Itoro Bassey
Esinam Bediako, a Ghanaian American writer from Detroit, and Itoro Bassey, a Nigerian American writer born in Houston and raised in New England, are both debut, second-generation African-diasporic authors. Bediako’s debut, Blood on the Brain, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press in September, and Bassey’s debut, Faith, was published by Malarkey Books in 2022.\
Shelf Awareness Interviews Eunice Hong, Author of MEMENTO MORI
Reading with… Eunice Hong
Eunice Hong is the director of the Leadership Initiative and a lecturer in law at Columbia Law School. She was previously a litigation associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, and a law clerk to Richard M. Berman in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Hong received her J.D. from Columbia Law School after graduating from Phillips Academy Andover and Brown University. She resides in New York City. Her debut novel, Memento Mori (Red Hen Press, August 13, 2024), is the winner of the 2021 Red Hen Press Fiction Award.
Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:
Memento Mori offers a modern perspective on the Eurydice and Orpheus myth through a Korean woman who uses storytelling to try to understand her grief.
On your nightstand now:
My friends and parents make fun of me for this, but I’m always reading The Iliad. I have Allen Rogers Benner’s Selections from Homer’s Iliad next to my bed, because I’m trying to get back into a practice of reading the Greek. I also have two other books that I’m looking forward to starting:
This Flesh Is Mine by Brian Woolland, a play drawn from The Iliad that was performed in both Palestine and in London in 2014 in a joint coproduction by the Ashtar Theatre and Border Crossings; and Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon, a novel about the Peloponnesian War that debuted this year.