Samuel Kọ´láwọlé: Talent Is Never Enough

Samuel Kọ´láwọlé was born and raised in Ibadan, Nigeria. His work has appeared in AGNI, Georgia Review, The Hopkins Review, Gulf Coast, Washington Square Review, Harvard Review, Image Journal, and other literary publications. He has received numerous residencies and fellowships, and has been a finalist for the Graywolf Press Africa Prize, shortlisted for U.K.’s The First Novel Prize, and won an Editor-Writer Mentorship Program for Diverse Writers.

He studied at the University of Ibadan and holds a Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing with distinction from Rhodes University, South Africa; is graduate of the MFA in Writing and Publishing at Vermont College of Fine Arts; and earned his PhD in English and Creative Writing from Georgia State University. He has taught creative writing in Africa, Sweden, and the United States, and currently teaches fiction writing as an Assistant Professor of English and African Studies at Pennsylvania State University. Follow him on X (Twitter), Facebook, and Instagram.

Samuel Kolawole

Photo by Mercedes Jones

In this interview, Samuel discusses how what he witnessed on an artistic road trip helped lead him toward his new literary novel, The Road to the Salt Sea, his hope for readers, and more!

Name: Samuel Kọ´láwọlé
Literary agent: Julie Stevenson at MMQ
Book title: The Road to the Salt Sea
Publisher: Amistad/ Harper Collins
Release date: July 2, 2024
Genre/category: Literary
Elevator pitch: Able God works at a high-end hotel in Nigeria, but an incident sends him fleeing into the desert with a gang of drug-addled migrants. They hope to start a new life in Europe, but they fall victim to human traffickers and must struggle for their lives and freedom.

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What prompted you to write this book?

In 2013, I participated in an artistic road trip with a group of photographers and writers curated by the Invisible Borders Trans-African Project, which focused on challenging ideas and preconceptions about Africa by sending artists across borders. We made five- to seven-day stops in three West African countries to network with art communities and present our work. During one of our stops in Accra, Ghana, I came across a group of migrants who had undertaken a dangerous journey across the Sahara and had been deported. Their stories haunted me for years and after several months of research—or “poking and prying with a purpose,” as Zora Neale Hurston puts it—I felt I was ready to put something down.

I remember composing a short story during a frenzied creative burst. It was one of the rare occasions when a story came to me in its whole. I felt like I needed to shake something off me. It was published by the great literary journal AGNI under the title “Sweet sweet strawberry taste.” This story connected with readers, and I saw that it had the potential to be stretched into a longer form. While thinking about the framework for the premise of the novel, I knew I wanted it to be about a journey, about movements.

I’ve been interested by the concept of the road, journeys, and movement since I was introduced as a young reader to literature such as The Odyssey, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic work The Road, and JM Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K.

Someone said we are readers and travelers alike, reading the road, moving through pages and passages and words. Odysseys expose the vulnerability and humanity of characters in ways that other human pursuits do not.

The Road to the Salt Sea is a story about movements, crossroads, and the need to be free. It puts a human face to a situation that most people only consider to be a statistic or the subject of headlines. It captures immigrants and sojourners in all their humanity.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

As earlier said, the first seed of the novel was planted many years ago. Then I wrote “Sweet sweet strawberry taste” in 2018. Short stories and novels are two very distinct forms, and not just because they have different lengths. I knew I had to expand the scope of the story. The first thing I did was to change the point of view. “Sweet sweet strawberry taste” was composed in first-person plural, a perspective that I believe is best suited for short form, so I converted it to third person and incorporated a central protagonist. Of course, there were other changes like expanding time, adding more characters, and introducing subplots etc. As a novel, I experimented with several structures until I ultimately found what worked.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

The road from completing the manuscript to publishing was unexpectedly fraught with challenges. I sold the novel just before the COVID outbreak, which caused delays, and then my acquiring editor resigned. Although it was such an emotional roller coaster, I had a strong network of supportive individuals who gave me encouragement and believed in the project. In the end, everything worked out, and this book is, in my opinion, being released at the perfect time. I cannot wait to share this book with readers.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

Writing this book made me a better writer, as it should be for every writer working on a project. I was astonished to realize that I didn’t have complete control over my characters. After a while, they began dictating to me how they wanted to be in this fictional universe. Also, the novel evolved quite a bit from the initial draft, which was not unexpected. What surprised me was how many fresh ideas surfaced during the redrafting process, new facets of the plot that I had overlooked. This is the beauty of the creative process.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I hope readers will be entertained by the novel, but beyond that I hope it sheds light on the underreported crisis of trans-Saharan migration and spark a wider conversation about migration in the United States and elsewhere.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

At the risk of sounding like the protagonist of my novel, Able God, I’d say: Talent is never enough. Hard work and tenacity are needed too.

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