Kelechi Okafor in conversation about romance and crafting short stories

"I’m going to keep this [Instagram] video nice and brief because every time I’ve tried to record it, I’ve said things that are likely going to [end up] with me in jail.” With more than 124,000 followers on Instagram, Kelechi Okafor has a knack for social commentary. Covering pressing issues ranging from the cost-of-living crisis to missing migrant children, Okafor injects her own brand of humour to deliver messages in a comprehensible manner that is funny without being facetious. Master of social media and host of her own podcast “Say Your Mind”, Okafor has rapidly garnered fans for her ability to work with words across different mediums. So, it only made sense for the multihyphenate to add the title of author to her repertoire with the release of Edge of Here, her collection of short stories.

Having spent her early years in Nigeria, Okafor moved to England at the age of five with Yoruba as her native tongue. “I remember my step-dad saying to me, ‘You’re in England now, you have to speak English.’ So one of the best ways for me to learn [the language] was to read a lot.” Borrowing her mother’s Mills & Boon novels, Okafor saw reading as a means of escapism: a chance to “explore different worlds”. For her, books offered the opportunity to uncover truths, unlock forgotten histories and cultivate a sense of belonging.

A tribute to the lived experiences of Black women, each of Okafor’s short stories has a sci-fi element and explores scenarios that exist on the cusp of our present reality, hence, the book’s title: Edge of Here. In one story, Okafor uses the recent overturning of the Roe versus Wade decision in the US to explore a dystopian near-future where people’s wombs are entirely controlled by the government. Although the subject matter can be heavy, Okafor notes that each story is imbued with a sense of hope. “Black women deserve love, tenderness, romance; they deserve to read about themselves—and not always in a traumatic way,” she explains.

I think the short stories essentially chose me. I definitely knew that there were stories that I wanted to channel through me that hadn’t been written yet—they had to be in my style

Opting for a collection of short stories over a novel was a natural choice for her. “Short stories aren’t half-finished stories, they are entire stories. They just end where they end,” she muses in a matter-of-fact way. She likens herself to a creative conduit; the short stories arriving in her mind, as if by a fortunate twist of fate. “I remember this Toni Morrison quote, ‘If there’s a book you want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it,’” explains Okafor. “I think the short stories essentially chose me. I definitely knew that there were stories that I wanted to channel through me that hadn’t been written yet—they had to be in my style.”

Shining lights

Okafor names Morrison as one of her favourite authors, alongside fellow remarkable Black women writers Octavia Butler, Alice Walker, Malorie Blackman and Maya Angelou. She says Butler’s seminal sci-fi novel Wild Seed changed her life, commending the author’s ability to create an entire world steeped in wonder and weirdness. Okafor notes that every one of the authors she mentioned has left an imprint on her, in both a personal and professional sense. “They showed me that my pain wasn’t isolated to me,” she says. “There’s a whole matriarchal lineage that I wasn’t aware of—perhaps they’re not my mothers but they raised me with their words. I feel like Edge of Here is a homage to that.” 

Okafor is aware that her multifaceted identity as both a woman of colour and a storyteller can sometimes be at odds. “Some people are not going to listen [to me], they’ll think: ‘Oh, there’s a Black woman on my screen,’” she says about her social media presence. Explaining that she communicates in a way that is “a bit more robust or gritty than most people would prefer”, she is hyper-conscious of alienating different audiences when she speaks. She sees Edge of Here as an opportunity to relate to people in a way she hasn’t before. “If you invite people to invest in your protagonists and deliver those same messages in a manner that enables them to exercise the suspension of disbelief, then you have a way to get into their hearts.” For her, “eschewing pretence” is the overarching objective, aiming to sprinkle parts of herself throughout each narrative.

I hope that when people read Edge of Here they feel like they’re being hugged from the inside. It’s a call to love ourselves fiercely

She credits Trapeze editorial director Sareeta Domingo for helping to refine her work, making it “more accessible and cohesive” for the audiences she hopes to reach. Domingo has been a key figure in Okafor’s literary journey from the beginning, assisting the author in securing her first piece of published work. Back in 2019, Okafor had shaped a proposal to write a non-fiction book about Black women and anger, outlining that anger could lead to collective liberation if addressed constructively. Deciding not to go ahead because she was dissatisfied with the publication process, 2020 coincidentally saw Okafor’s thoughts come to fruition in the form of the groundbreaking Black Lives Matter movement.

Love is in the air

Soon afterwards, Domingo asked Okafor to submit a short story for Who’s Loving You, an anthology she was putting together featuring romantic stories written by women of colour. “I appreciate Sareeta as a Black woman and as another human, who was able to see me beyond social commentary and this performance of anger, to see the love. I clearly must love love to want life to be better for us [as Black people],” says Okafor. She submitted “The Watchers”, a tale of two lovers, Ndidi and Chinonso, who exist during the time of a biochemical outbreak, their destinies governed by guardian angels known as The Watchers. Her story was so popular that fans begged for a novel to see the continuation of the pair’s romance, but Okafor decided that their story already had a fixed end. However, Trapeze sought to secure more ideas from her, offering a two-book deal off the back of the story.

Edge of Here will be the first release, with a novel to follow in 2024. Although categorised as speculative fiction, as in “The Watchers”, romance is a central theme in Edge of Here. Okafor details her favourite story that came to her fully formed at 2:48 one morning, right before she was due to fly to Nigeria. The story follows a protagonist who brushes against a fellow parent while picking up her son, only to see visions of their life together—despite being married to someone else. “I love that idea of love transcending dimensions and time lines,” she says emphatically. “Romance that is otherworldly and transcends the mundane but is still firmly etched within the mundane.”