Uche Okonkwo

Jun 12, 2024 | therumpus.net | Uche Okonkwo

The Author: Uche OkonkwoThe Book: A Kind of Madness (Tin House, 2024)The Elevator Pitch: Ten stories about dysfunctional families, fraught relationships, and things that drive us to madness. ***The Rumpus: Where did the idea of your book come from? Uche Okonkwo: The ideas for the stories came from various life experiences: family, boarding school, living in Nigeria. Rumpus: How long did it take to write the book? Okonkwo: All the stories were written in a period of about ten years.

Jun 5, 2024 | bookbrowse.com | Uche Okonkwo |Elisabeth Cook

BookBrowse: A suspenseful and clever collection of stories that touches on the isolation, absurdities, and dilemmas of contemporary social life. The word "madness," like many others that can be used to stigmatize mental illness — e.g., "crazy," "insane," may be falling out of fashion even as its vaguely dramatic tone preserves a romantic, timeless connotation.

Apr 26, 2024 | lithub.com | Uche Okonkwo

The following is a story from Uche Okonkwo's collection A Kind of Madness. Okonkwo’s stories have been published in A Public Space, One Story, the Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2019, and Lagos Noir. She is a recipient of the George Bennett Fellowship at Phillips Exeter Academy, a Steinbeck Fellowship, and an Elizabeth George Foundation grant. He grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, and is pursuing a creative writing PhD at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Apr 22, 2024 | largeheartedboy.com | Uche Okonkwo

In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, and many others. Uche Okonkwo’s collectionA Kind of Madness is filled with nuanced and moving stories of modern Nigeria.

Apr 15, 2024 | electricliterature.com | Uche Okonkwo

I have always loved the versatility of the short story, how it can so easily take on the forms of other things. There are playlist short stories, recipe short stories, diary and epistolary-style short stories. There are flash fiction stories, short short stories, and long short stories that invite you to argue for them as novellas. There are linked short stories that allow you the swift closure of the form while keeping you tethered to characters or place.