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Shoneyin is an award winning British Nigerian author and poet who was named Africa Literary Person of the Year in 2017.

Her work includes three books of poems: So All the Time I Was Sitting on an Egg (1997), Song of a Riverbird (2002) and For the Love of Flight (2010) and two children’s books. Mayowa and the Masquerades(2010) won the 2011 Atiku Abubakar Prize for Children’s literature in Nigeria.

Her bestselling novel, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, was nominated for the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2011 and went on to win the PEN Oakland 2011 Josephine Miles Literary Award and the 2011 Ken Saro-Wiwa Prose Prize. It is being adapted for Netflix by Mo Abudu as part of the streaming platform’s commitment to original African content. It has also been adapted for the stage and was performed at the Arcola Theatre in London.

Shoneyin founded the largest book festival in Africa, Ake Festival. She is also the creative director of the new Kaduna Book and Arts Festival. Shoneyin also runs the publishing imprint and bookshop Ouida Books in Nigeria and she founded the Book

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: Your first poetry collection appeared in 1998 and your reputation as a writer has been built on your work as a poet. (Indeed you cannot resist making the title of your first novel a short poem.) Has your debut novel, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives been long in the writing or has it simply taken long to find a suitable publisher?

L.S.: It is true that I have been better known as a poet but I have always written prose. My unpublished collection of short stories was shortlisted for an ANA [Association of Nigerian Writers] prose prize in 1999. I developed a passion for poetry in the early 90s, proving that you produce what you consume. I had an insatiable appetite for American poetry. I loved everything from Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, to Ntosake Shange, from Sylvia Plath to Allen Ginsberg, from Langston Hughes to Anne Sexton.

The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives is actually the third novel I’ve written in the last ten years. It’s a classic case of third time lucky. With my first novel, I didn’t allow myself to have any real expectations b

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Lola Shoneyin

The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives (William Morrow, 2010)

When Baba Segi awoke with a bellyache for the sixth day in a row, he knew it was time to do something drastic about his fourth wife’s childlessness.

Meet Baba Segi . . .

A plump, vain, and prosperous middle-aged man of robust appetites, Baba Segi is the patriarch of a large household that includes a quartet of wives and seven children. But his desire to possess more just might be his undoing.

And his wives . . .

Iya Segi—the bride of Baba Segi’s youth, a powerful, vindictive woman who will stop at nothing to protect her favored position as ruler of her husband’s home.

Iya Tope—Baba Segi’s second wife, a shy, timid woman whose decency and lust for life are overshadowed by fear.

Iya Femi—the third wife, a scheming woman with crimson lips and expensive tastes who is determined to attain all that she desires, no matter what the cost.

Bolanle—Babi Segi’s fourth and youngest wife, an educated woman wise to life’s misfortunes who inspires jealousy in her fellow wives . . . and who harbors a secret t