Natasha Onwuemezi

Writer, editor, strategist

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  • WHAT’S NEW IN… SYSTEMS FICTION

    WHAT’S NEW IN… SYSTEMS FICTION

    A regular genre column for Mslexia, introducing writers to a fiction genre through the authors shaping it, the craft it demands and the agents currently buying it.

    One morning in 2014, novelist Laila Lalami saw a Google notification on her phone: ‘If you leave right now, you will make it to YogaWorks at 7.28.’ She had never told Google she went to yoga, let alone the time or place of her classes. The company had simply tracked her movements until its algorithms had learned that she typically left home at a certain time each week and visited a location that its mapping software had determined was a yoga studio. She turned to her husband and said, ‘Pretty soon, the only privacy we will have will be in our dreams.’ But this also made her pause. What if dreams are taken from us, too?

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  • WHAT’S NEW IN… BODY HORROR FICTION

    WHAT’S NEW IN… BODY HORROR FICTION

    A regular genre column for Mslexia, introducing writers to a fiction genre through the authors shaping it, the craft it demands and the agents currently buying it.

    In Franz Kafka’s 1915 novella, Gregor Samsa opens his eyes and discovers he has been transformed into a gigantic insect. It is one of the most striking and visceral images in literature: a body rendered alien overnight, the self stranded helplessly inside. 

    The body is at once deeply personal and unnervingly unknowable. Body horror dials that up to eleven – destabilising everything we feel the body should be – safe, secure, rooted – and turning it into a site of hellish transformation.

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  • Entry to the club is as tough as ever for Black authors

    Entry to the club is as tough as ever for Black authors

    I was in Berlin the other day. There is a world-famous club (Berghain) and a world-famous bouncer (Sven) who stands between a night (or morning) of pulsing beats, slick sweat and sensational (I imagine) vibes. The door policy is notoriously opaque – and you can be turned away with a flick of the wrist without explanation or apology, even after you have spent hours queuing. My friends and I were short on time (and rejection tolerance), so we decided not to even try.

    I found myself thinking about it while compiling this year’s Black Publishing Focus because it mirrors what the book trade has been asking Black writers, readers and publishing professionals to do for years: invest time and effort in an industry whose judgements depend on who is on the door.

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  • Will Black authors ultimately receive the long-term support they need?

    Will Black authors ultimately receive the long-term support they need?

    Each year, the Black publishing issue offers a critical pause: a moment to reflect,not only on the books, voices and visions shaping Black British publishing today, but also on the wider systems in which they are trying to thrive. It is an issue produced with care, but also with urgency – because the stories shared here are not new. What is new is the increasing clarity with which they are being told, the precision with which patterns are being named, and the deepening call for change that will not settle for surface-level progress.

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  • State of play: can stalled momentum in Black publishing be undone?

    State of play: can stalled momentum in Black publishing be undone?

    In 2020 – amid a glut of black Instagram squares, urgent tweets and bold diversity declarations – publishing promised change. Five years on, the industry is seemingly teetering between stasis and regression. Behind the public messaging, many publishing insiders describe a quieter, more insidious reversal: funding has dried up, initiatives have folded and editorial interest has waned. Instead, the landscape of Black publishing appears marked by stalled momentum, systemic fatigue and profound frustration.

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  • Peepal Tree Press reflects on 40 years of publishing

    Peepal Tree Press reflects on 40 years of publishing

    Celebrating 40 years at the forefront of Caribbean and Black British literature, Leeds-based independent publisher Peepal Tree Press has become a “honeypot” for writers and readers seeking stories that transcend the mainstream and preserve the cultural richness of the Caribbean and its diaspora.

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  • RF Kuang on her first novel

    RF Kuang on her first novel

    RF Kuang is having a chaotic start to the year. Before we chat, she kindly warns me that she might have to step away for a second to take a call from the mechanic. She also asks if we can Zoom with our cameras off – she’s just had eye surgery and shouldn’t spend too much time looking at screens. Feeling the effects of screen fatigue myself, I am more than happy to oblige.

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  • Pressure points: The Bookseller’s Black Issue 2022 editor’s letter

    Pressure points: The Bookseller’s Black Issue 2022 editor’s letter

    “Surprise, bitch—I bet you thought you’d seen the last of me.” For some, this issue of The Bookseller might feel like the literary version of that “American Horror Story” meme, where Emma Roberts’ character (spoiler alert) comes back from the dead. Reactions to us working on this second iteration of last year’s award-winning Black Issue, expertly edited by Black Agents and Editors’ Group founder Marianne Tatepo, have been mixed. For some (including our painfully honest contributors) there is a risk of tokenism and othering in such dedicated issues. The same criticism has been levelled at the Discover Preview that I curate each month.

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  • Ayobami Adebayo, six years on

    Ayobami Adebayo, six years on

    I first met Ayobami Adebayo six years ago to interview her about her debut Stay With Me; it was the first interview she’d done for the book. Many things have changed since, for one, Adebayo has just been longlisted for the Booker Prize for her latest novel A Spell of Good Things. For another, we’ve both lived through a global pandemic, which has seen us replace the fancy restaurant and expense account of our last interview with a video call that might have been hiding the fact that we were both wearing pyjama bottoms.

    Back then, not only was the word pandemic not in our vernacular, neither was Zoom, something that has made this international call possible. Except, it’s not quite as international as I was expecting. Logging on, I assumed Adebayo would be dialling in from sunny, vibrant, colourful Lagos, but instead, the grey backdrop tells me all I need to know: she’s currently experiencing the best summer the UK has to offer. I ask if she’s looking forward to going back to her home city. “Very much so, given the turn in the weather,” she says, with a laugh. “I mean, a couple of days ago I was thinking of bringing out a duvet, it was that cold. It went down to like nine degrees at one point. Like what is this?”

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  • Liv Little speaks about her début novel exploring creativity, grief, home and love

    Liv Little speaks about her début novel exploring creativity, grief, home and love

    “I think love is a really transformational thing. For me, I’ve found being in relationships with other women, especially Black women, has been kind of like holding up a mirror to all of the different parts of yourself.” So says Liv Little about the driving force behind her delicate, evocative début Rosewater, which follows 28-year-old poet Elsie as she struggles to find her feet in a world that is becoming increasingly difficult to navigate.

    Speaking on a surprisingly resilient WhatsApp call that only disconnects once, Little is currently in a reflective, contemplative headspace in the Jamaican mountains, where she has come to spread her dad’s ashes. From the first page to the last—and including the moving acknowledgements and disarmingly atmospheric cover—the novel’s heady themes of love, home and grief are powerfully portrayed.

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