“Story takes time, investment, and grit. It also takes wonder, and willingness to build your writing muscles and your toolbox.” —Ehigbor Okosun
On Wednesday, December 3, Ehigbor Okosun will teach “Your World as Character: Creating Worlds That Feel Expansive, Unique, and Lived In.” In this class, students will learn — regardless of genre or stage of the project — how to define their stories’ ecosystems, stoke readers’ imaginations, and enrichen their works’ unique worlds.
Ehigbor Okosun, or just Ehi, is the #1 International Bestselling author of Forged by Blood, the first in an action-packed adult epic fantasy duology. Raised across four continents, she now resides in the US, where she writes speculative fiction, mystery thrillers, and contemporary novels for adult and YA audiences. She writes in hopes of doing justice to the myths and traditions she grew up steeped in, and to honour her large, multiracial and multiethnic family. She is a graduate of UT Austin with degrees in Plan II Honors, Neurolinguistics, and English, as well as Chemistry and Pre-Medical studies. When she’s not reading, you can catch her bullet journalling, gaming, baking, singing, doing yoga and spending time with her loved ones. Her second book, Exiled by Iron arrived to acclaim in October 2024.
Here’s what Ehigbor had to share with us:
Who are your earliest influences? What people and books made you a writer?
Ehigbor Okosun: I loved reading as a child, and I read a lot of classics—Shakespeare, Enid Blyton, Alexandre Dumas, Dickens, Sharon Shinn, Chinua Achebe, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jane Austen, Keigo Higashino, Agatha Christie, Octavia Butler, Shin Kyung Sook, Frank Herbert, Anne McCaffrey, Ann Patchett, Louisa May Alcott. I’m sure some will look at this list and think, but she mentioned quite a few genre authors, and I assure you that was very much on purpose. Everything is genre, even when we pretend that’s not the case. I also grew up on folktales and home stories from different parts of my family, and read an extensive amount of manga and manhwa, and the influence of all that story cannot be understated in my development.
What writing challenges have you faced? What have these challenges taught you about your process?
EO: Funnily enough, the biggest writing struggle was about having information. I stumbled into publishing poetry as an eight year old child, but I knew little to nothing about the book publishing industry. I’d always loved to write, but I didn’t know it could truly be a career until I started talking to professors at university and getting recommendations for how to go about getting published. Now, the biggest writing challenge is staying true to my voice and knowing what I want and need to say though the industry has become more concerned with trends, and in researching what an imaginary reader might want. I think all authors come to a point where they have to decide if they’re gonna tell the story they need to tell, or if they’re going to play to an audience and its desires. For me, I’m much happier writing what I need to, and then welcoming people in to read those words. This holds for me as a reader as well—my moods and tastes fluctuate, so I’d rather be welcomed into a story and surprised than have a story cater to me.
From your perspective, what’s the most rewarding part about being a writer?
EO: The magic of it all. Writing is more than a calling—it’s the act of creation itself. When I’m writing and I get to meet my characters and see the story unfurl in ways I couldn’t even know when I set out working on it, I just feel so blessed. It’s a transformative experience. Then, when others read those words and they resonate? That is transformative as well.
Who do you write for?
EO: If you’d caught me at the beginning of my writing journey, I would have said that I write for the marginalized, for those who have never seen themselves celebrated and full, wondrous and deliciously despicable in story. But in truth, now, I know I write for everyone and no one at all. I write for myself, for the characters that live inside screaming to get out. I write because I must. I no longer think or imagine an audience when I write because I’ve discovered that this can lead to a lot of unnecessary internal editing that doesn’t allow the story to thrive. Birth the story first, and submit to a professional editor to shape it after, and let that person tell you about audience considerations then.
What do you hope writers will learn from your course?
EO: That they are free. That they are imaginative and creative and they are capable, or can become capable of surrendering to story and finding out what a story needs. Story takes time, investment, and grit. It also takes wonder, and willingness to build your writing muscles and your toolbox. Let this be an exercise session in our journey to story understanding and appreciation.
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Thanks, Ehigbor!
Click here to learn more about Ehigbor’s upcoming class.
