Brittle Paper’s Writer of the Month for July is Ibrahim Babátúndé Ibrahim!

Ibrahim Babátúndé Ibrahim is a UK-based writer, editor, and all-round creative individual from Nigeria. He grew up telling stories, spent years in the media and entertainment world, and has recently found his way back to the literary path. Ibrahim has wasted no time in growing his literary portfolio. His published works can be found in Typehouse Literary Magazine, Zone 3, Landlocked Magazine, Popula, Ake Review, Black Muslim Reads Anthology, the Decolonial Passage, and Bell Press to name a few.

In 2020, Ibrahim won the 2nd runner-up prize in the #GogeAfrica20 Writing Contest and 4th runner-up prize in Ibua Journal’s Pack Light Series. His unpublished collection of short stories, Dear Descendant(s), was a finalist at the Moon City Fiction Prize (2021), also making the longlist of Dzanc Diverse Voices Prize (2020). Not to mention making the longlist for the 2022 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, being nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net (thrice).

Ibrahim’s work explores the human experience from an African perspective. He believes in the power of storytelling, not just for its entertainment, but more importantly, its unrivaled ability to shape minds across generations. He sees himself as a unique voice for telling untold stories. He serves as a writer, editor, and interviewer with Ayamba Litcast, a prose editor with Lumiere Review, as well as works for the Journal of African Youth Literature.

I could list so many more accolades, but nothing beats hearing from the man himself. So, let’s get into the interview.

 

Brittle Paper

Ibrahim, congratulations on being July Writer of the Month! How does it feel to know your piece, “This is the End”, is the highlight of the month’s publications?

Ibrahim Babátúndé Ibrahim

Thank you, Tahzeeb! It actually does feel like winning an award, because, of course, there were other works – works that were awesome and excellent enough to stand out from the submission pile – that were published on Brittle Paper over the course of the month. So, for my short story to be singled out as the month’s highlight, that’s definitely a feat, one that I’m very proud of.

Brittle Paper

Many dream of leaving behind office jobs to pursue a passion, but few actually do because of how scary it is. Am I right in assuming that you did take the leap to do writing full time? What pushed you to finally do that?

Ibrahim Babátúndé Ibrahim

Your assumption is spot on, and the funny thing is, when you’re stuck in that job with dreams of a passion that you’d rather be pursuing, the dreams usually feel so distant that the fear is frozen and somewhat redundant. You’re not exactly scared because it is a pipe dream, and you’ll most likely never leave the job anyway. I’m speaking for myself, but I believe it’s the same for a lot of people. In my case, however, working in the entertainment industry as a record label executive was a fun spot in itself, but I guess, as a creative, the restlessness gets to you, especially when you don’t feel like you’re getting your ideas out like you want to.

When you conceive ideas in your head, mind or whatever it is, the natural order is for some to go to waste and for a few to be birthed. A lot of people are comfortable with all their ideas going to waste, but when you’re a creative, there will always be one or two diehard ones that torment you until they’re birthed, even if they fail in the end. When you can’t birth, not because you don’t want to, but because circumstances stifle you, you become restless, you become uncomfortable, you start to feel out of place. That restlessness highlighted my need to be elsewhere. Some place where the brush is mine, the paint is mine, the canvas is mine, and even if I make art that I don’t like in the end, I’d at least know that I purged it out of my system and of my own volition.

Brittle Paper

After deciding to rectify that restlessness and ground yourself in your chosen art form, what made you decide to settle on writing?

Ibrahim Babátúndé Ibrahim

So, I aced my Junior Secondary Certificate Exams in such flying colors that I got sentenced to science class. If the Nigerian education system hadn’t been that way at the time, I wouldn’t have had to be breaking out of a different job or career after serving such a lengthy time in the first place. I was blessed to be born into a family of storytellers. As a kid, my dad told my siblings and I stories from the Quran every evening. Afterwards, I’d spend the rest of the night listening to my grandmother’s tales of the tortoise and other African folklore characters. That was a very potent drug, and I got addicted quick. The supply from my dad and grandmother became too far between. I started wanting my fix of stories every minute, anywhere and everywhere. Books became the answer.

I was walking into poles, book in hand, getting caught with novels underneath my desk in the middle of classes, spending my entire nights before dim lanterns after the adults had said goodnight. I was done with all the novels in the school series before I turned seven. By the time I was eight, I was already into the Pace Setters Series, the African Writer Series, and James Hadley Chase novels. I had finished both the Quran and the Bible before I was ten, all for the love of stories. Whenever I ran out of books to read, I would devour newspapers and magazines. Even the dictionary wasn’t spared.

All of these had their effect. First, it was me conceiving stories and writing them down. I remember an essay I wrote in Primary 5 getting singled out for praise, and I remember carrying this form into Junior Secondary School. I tried my best to fight it when science class was foisted on me. I skipped classes and became a nuisance in the ones I attended. Soon I got tired of fighting and succumbed. Too mad at everything and everyone, I stopped reading and I stopped writing. In the end, I never did well with science. I did a lot in the entertainment industry between 2009 and 2019, and many will tell you that I did them well, but what I’ve found that I do best is that which was denied me years ago: writing. It was only natural that I would find my way back to it.

Brittle Paper

You went from spending so many years without writing to fully embracing it again. How did you navigate your way back into the creative writing space?

Ibrahim Babátúndé Ibrahim

In all honesty, it’s been one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do, especially at the beginning. I came in with a lot of confidence, feeling like a very good writer [laughs]. That was in March 2019, and for the entire year, I was submitting every other week and couldn’t score even one publication. By that time, my confidence was so battered I’m not sure why I didn’t listen to the people who thought I was mad leaving the glam of entertainment for ‘an industry that didn’t pay that well anyway’. I know I thought of listening to them, giving up, thinking maybe it wasn’t for me after all. But from the turn of 2020, the acceptances started pouring in and haven’t stopped since. That year alone, I scored over 18 publications, won two awards, made a high-profile longlist, and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. The rest since then, as they say, is history. But I really could have given up.

The industry is not very friendly to beginners. There are not enough support systems. There are cold shoulders everywhere. I sought and sought for mentors, but it was a dead end. It felt like everyone knew everyone and I was just an outsider. Eventually, I decided to leave it alone and go focus on my writing. In the end, that paid off, but it really doesn’t have to be that hard for other newcomers looking to chart a course in writing. That said, I did eventually get some help, a lot of it in fact, and I’d be really ungrateful if I don’t mention people like Bronwyn King, Layla Poulus-Abdallah, Temitayo Olofinlua, Halima Aliyu, Deborah Oluniran, and Yvonne Owuor Adhiambo, to name a few. These people, coincidentally all women, looked at me at a time when I had no successes to boast of and rendered help that they really didn’t have to. Oh, EC Osondu as well. He gave me valuable words that still ring true today. Such acts of kindness go a long way in helping to strengthen the confidence of budding talents who perhaps only needed just that to go and be the stars that they could become.

Brittle Paper

Thankfully for us, you found your way back to writing. I always love hearing about new and aspiring writers being mentored or helped along the way. Sometimes, it is just a small act of someone reading your work or giving a writing tip, but the impact of that act does wonders for a writer who needs some guidance. What would you say has been your best resource?

Ibrahim Babátúndé Ibrahim

So many things come to mind, but one stands out, and that is this awesome writing group that I belong to. I don’t believe we actually named it, but it is unofficially called the Thursday Writing Group. It was put together by Joshua Kepreotis, a writer and friend from Kythira, Greece. The group has all these amazing writers from different nooks of the globe, sharing and critiquing work. It’s like a never-ending MFA. I’ve found that the feedback I get on any piece of work transcends that particular work and makes me a better writer on everything else. The group is by far my best resource, and I encourage every writer who is still trying to find their feet to find and join a writing group. It truly helps.

Brittle Paper

Well, we are very grateful for your determination to come back to writing, and for those who helped along the way, because now you are our Brittle Paper Writer of the Month. I review a ton of submissions every week, and I always tell writers that there is no such thing as an original plot anymore, but what matters is how you rewrite it. “This is the End” is an excellent example of that because it ticks so many tropes, such as mental health, religion, satire, and social commentary, and yet it is told in such an intriguing way. I mentioned to you before that it reminds me of C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, but even then, the story still felt like your own and still held its own. What led you to write this?

Ibrahim Babátúndé Ibrahim

That comparison still tickles me, I tell you [laughs]. To be honest, I didn’t even read The Screwtape Letters until after you made the comparison, and I must say that I feel quite flattered. What led me to write the story is simple. Over the last couple of years, the spate of suicide among young people in Nigeria (and I suppose other places as well) has been really high, and I’m one writer who thrives on putting myself in other people’s shoes. Like, what were those last moments like? Were there second thoughts? Was it an easy decision to make? Was it a spur of the moment that went too far? Was there some sort of satisfaction getting it done? Things like that. Some shoes though are extremely difficult to get into no matter how hard you try, which is what I hoped to capture with this specific piece.

Personally, I’ve battled a spate of depression myself, a really long one that lasted over a year, but as dark as it got for me at the time, I can’t remember ever thinking of taking my life. Yes, I thought of dying, leaving it all behind and all. I bet if I had been caught in a life-threatening situation, I probably wouldn’t have tried too hard to save myself because I lacked the will for everything, but I never imagined I’d do it myself, you know? Make a plan, write a note, take my life… that entire process, nah. Thankfully, it never got that bad for me. So, these shoes have refused to be filled since I had the idea two years ago. Finally this year, I decided to spin the plot and try an entirely different way, and the result was “This is the End.”

Funny enough, I’ve written over twelves stories each year since 2019 when I started writing fully, but this year so far, aside from old stories that I’ve had to polish here and there, “This is the End” is the only one I have managed to write anew.

Brittle Paper

On that note, I’m always curious about different writers’ writing processes. How would you describe yours? Is it structured or do you randomly get inspiration and then go from there?

Ibrahim Babátúndé Ibrahim

For the most part, it is random. I’m mostly self-taught so there’s so much I don’t know when it comes to structuring and processes, so, me, I usually just write. But then again, over the past three years, I have learned so much. Each story or essay has had its own unique lessons. Getting professional feedback, taking courses and joining a writing group, all these things teach one thing or the other. So, these days, I’ve learned to respect the story more than I used to. My environment is my biggest influence, and inspiration can come at any time as long as my senses are open to the things going on around me. Some stories just want to get out onto the paper, regardless of how it happens. They possess you and get your fingers working until the last full stop is out. Some other stories want more care in the way that they are formed and written down. Some won’t come at all until all your research is done. You could sit in front of the computer for days and no single word you get on the page would stick, but when they finally decide it is time, you would not get up from the computer from the first word until the last.

“This is the End” was one such story. I’ve learned to master the differences. Mostly, I just freestyle, but writing has become much more serious now for me than it was three years ago when I left my job for it. So, these days, I often think the process through before I start. I see the beginning, the middle, and the end before I commit, unless the story itself tells me otherwise.

Brittle Paper

Your new piece is out at the end of the week. Without giving too much away, what can you tell our readers about Friday’s piece?

Ibrahim Babátúndé Ibrahim

Again, it’s another one of those really hard shoes to fill. It’s a situation that is all around us, but that most of us have never been in and will never be in. Sometimes I look at these situations and people and wonder who tells the stories therein. All stories matter, right? That should also mean that we need as much representation as possible, and this goes beyond the classifications that we already have. That are too many situations that don’t actually have assured spaces in our classifications, even though they seem to do, but they are some people’s lived experiences too, which makes them a part of our collective possibilities and awareness. I’m intrigued by these experiences. I love to explore them and make stories out of them. It’s my way of reminding people that life is bigger than our individual realities.

Brittle Paper

I think it’s fair to say, we are all very curious to read Friday’s piece now.

Before we go, Ibrahim, what can you tell aspiring writers about the creative journey they want to embark on?

Ibrahim Babátúndé Ibrahim

Starting over is never an easy thing to do, but I’ve found that it’s quite as powerful as it is beautiful when the energy is right. I didn’t come back to writing until I was 33. At that age, many people would think it is already too late to start a new career. I’m still a long way from where I want to be with my writing, but with the progress I’ve made so far, I’m confident I will get there. And that’s not even the sweetest victory I’ve tasted in this starting over business. So, I bungled my first attempt at university. I hated sciences, remember? My resulting computer science degree was so bad it was as good as no degree, so I went back to school in 2018 when I was 32 to study Business Administration. I graduate this year as a cum laude (first-class) student, and that’s so much more than I hoped for when I embarked on the journey. I already hold admissions for MA programs starting later this year.

All of a sudden, I can dream of and act on publishing my own books, and maybe even getting a PhD. I’m 36 now and it feels like my life has only just begun. All of a sudden, I can dream and live the dreams! It all just proves that it’s never too late. Whatever dreams you have, the best time to start was yesterday. The next best time is now.

Brittle Paper

Ibrahim, thank you for one of my favorite interviews so far, and for sharing so many wonderful stories and pieces of advice with our readers.

Ibrahim Babátúndé Ibrahim

You’re ever so kind, Tahzeeb. Thank you so much for having me!

 

 

 

 

For more of Ibrahim’s work, be sure to check out Friday’s story, and for more interviews with our writers, check out our last month’s with Mali Kambandu here.