Breakfast with Bristol24/7: Peace Adzo Medie

Peace Adzo Medie sits engrossed in a book at the Bristolian cafe on Picton Street, a fitting image for a writer who has just published her latest novel.

I almost don’t want to disturb her, but I’m also intrigued to find out what she is reading, such is the reverence with which we treat writers’ bookshelves.

The University of Bristol lecturer came to Bristol in 2019 and is still finding her feet here. “I like the pace of life in Bristol, and I love that I can walk to work!” she tells me after we order our food.

“But I don’t entirely understand English society,” she laughs. “But that’s fine, I feel like I’m on an adventure of sorts. I want to learn about this place.”

Peace was born in Liberia, but grew up in Ghana, before spending eight years in the US for her PhD and finally settling in Bristol.

She lives a life of two halves, simultaneously immersed in the fictional world of her strong female characters and existing in the very real world, researching violence against women in Africa.

While her research often bleeds into her novels, it’s her fictional world that brings us together.

Peace recently published her second novel, Nightbloom, after the success of her first novel, His Only Wife, which garnered praise from the likes of the New York Times and even Reese Witherspoon’s reading club.

Peace’s research into violence against women often crosses into her fictional work – photo: Mia Vines Booth

Both novels have brought her back to Ghana time and time again. “My creativity resides in Ghana,” she said. “All my ideas come when I am in Ghana, and most of my stories are about Ghana. It gives me this space in my mind to think and to write. Everytime I go there I start thinking about a new book.”

I ask her if she is recognised as a prestigious author in her hometown – after all she was crowned Ghana’s writer of the year in 2021.

“I live in a very tiny town,” she replies modestly. “I’m not really in the literary circles and you are highly unlikely to see me in public spaces. I go straight from the airport to my tiny hometown. I think other people don’t even know what I do.”

Peace comes from a creative family. Her sister and cousin are spoken word artists and have events in the bustling city of Accra, often seen as the cultural capital of West Africa.

Her own writing career began as a child, when she would empty the local library of its books, before writing her own short stories when she had read everything there was to offer. She read everything from Russian literature to stories about the mafia: “I had a stage where I was obsessed with the mafia when I was 13.”

Now Peace writes about love, through the perspective of strong female leads that grapple with a world of sexism and violence but also friendship and love. “I love love stories,” she coos. And it seems she has no plans to slow down, with three more novels in the pipeline.

“I like to joke that people climb mountains and jump out of planes and I just write,” she says. “Once the story is in my head it has to come out, because otherwise these characters will not let me rest.”

I ask her if any of the characters are based on her own experiences. “I don’t want to write about people I know but inadvertently you will end up writing about a character that is similar,” Peace answers. “But I don’t want people to think I’m mining their lives for my own benefit.”

“There is one character I want to write but I dread the reception of that book. I don’t know why but if you are Black, African or a woman, a lot of people assume that your work is autobiographical, in the sense that you lack imagination. So if I write this character, will they think it’s me?”

“I think that who gets to write a book, who gets to tell stories, and who gets to publish these stories is really important. I want to make sure I am reading books by people who are less likely to be published.”

Peace’s latest novel, Nightbloom, is available to buy at Bookhaus.

For those interested, Peace was reading Polish author Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive your Plough over the Bones of the Dead, (of which the Complicité production coincidentally came to Bristol Old Vic in January this year).

Main image: Lucy J Turner

This feature originally appeared in the latest Bristol24/7 quarterly magazine, available free across our city

Read more:

• Breakfast with Bristol24/7: Nancy Medina
• Clifton author releases debut novel to rave reviews
• Breakfast with Bristol24/7: Emily Breeze

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