Interview with Segilola Salami

Who inspires your writing?

• My daughter and my mom, the two Yetunde books were writing because of them.

Who is your favorite author?

• I don't have one favourite author. The very first book that I loved as an 11/12 year old is by Nyengi Koin called Time Changes Yesterday. The next one is The Gods Are Not To Blame by Ola Rotimi. As an adult, I like Stephen King

If you could never write again, what would you do?

• Writing involves using my hands and imagination. Only something seriously wrong would make me never write and then writing would be the least of my worries

What made you get into writing?

• I didn't set out to write, it sort of fell into my laps. You see, my mom passed away a little over a year before my daughter was born. One day when my daughter was sleeping (she was only a few months old then) I was thinking about my mom and the folktales she used to tell my sister and me. I couldn't remember in detail all the folktales she told me, so I decided to look into it further so that I could tell my own daughter when she was older. Whilst compiling it, I had (what I thought was a brilliant idea) to turn the folktales into 3D animation. Nollywood is the 3rd largest movie industry in the world but they focussed mainly on film and not animation. I thought it was the best time to bring change. Sadly that plan was deflated when I found out the cost of getting animations done. I thought that instead of letting the script gather dust whilst I looked for funding, I should re-write it into a novel and that was what I did and that lead to the birth of Yetunde: The Life And Times Of A Yoruba Girl In London (1). Doing so I think is the best decision I could have made. I hope to re-visit my original plan sometime in the future after I would have established my author platform.

When did you realize you were a writer?

• I guess I am but as someone who doesn't like labels, it's not something I ever thought of. I'm more of 'an idea pops into my head, I write it down' sort of person