Thursday, December 5, 2013

Interview with Fey Ugokwe, author of 'Wifey'

Fey Ugokwe was born in Washington, D.C., to immigrant parents–one from British Guiana, South America, and the other from Nigeria, West Africa. She was subsequently raised in Pennsylvania, and attended both college and law school in Massachusetts. Fey is an attorney, and the founder of a socially-conscious media activity. At the age of three, she was taught to read and write by her maternal grandmother, a British-trained schoolteacher, and has been writing fiction and poetry since a child. She received her formal training in novel writing, genre fiction writing, contemporary fiction writing, and political fiction writing in Massachusetts, where her professors included renowned authors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her interests are, namely, in genre, contemporary, and political fiction, and she has a strong interest in uniquely combining the essences of the three, in order to highlight the underpinnings of the human experience.
 Her latest book is the contemporary fiction, Wifey.

Visit her website at www.pinkpurseinternational.net.
 
Thank you for this interview!  I’d like to know more about you as a person first.  What do you do when you’re not writing?

My Mum sadly has stage IV uterine cancer--so whilst I would be delighted to state any one of my many interests, these days, my time is largely spent laboring at caring for her needs.

When did you start writing? 

Ever since my maternal Grandmum, a British-trained schoolteacher, taught me to read and write at the age of three--and my fingers haven't shut up since. 

As a published author, what would you say was the most pivotal point of your writing life?  

This one--walking in the uncharted-to-me rays of the post publication sun.

If you could go anywhere in the world to start writing your next book, where would that be and why?

Canada--Toronto, most specifically. Because that easy-breezy, cool where is the place in which I saw my first Shakespearean play, and was a frequent haunt of me and my very foreign immediate family, from my childhood times through my teens.

If you had 4 hours of extra time today, what would you do?

Actually sleep--which I even more so seldom do. And...repeat. But, knowing my body and its odd hypervigilance, which has been my way since a child, that would only last for a good hour and a half or so.

Where would you like to set a story that you haven’t done yet?

Brazil. My Mum is from the former British Guiana, South America, and Brasil is one of its neighbors. I would love to have a controlled romp through some of its wonders sometime soon, and play it all down to print. 

Back to your present book, Wifey, how did you publish it?

Indie-style, by sweet-faced necessity.

Where can readers purchase a copy of your book?

My Wifey is available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, Target.com, iBookstore, and other scrumptious, select online book retailers.

In writing your book, did you travel anywhere for research?

No--simply the business of living life again now in Texas, as a bicultural first-generationer on both sides, and some of the places I've walked before it, gave rise to the detail in this book.

Why was writing Wifey so important to you?

Wifey navigates the reader through nearby-real-time contemporary social and political justice themes, namely those of a dramatic change in socioeconomic status due to domestic/worldwide economic downturn; multicultural gender norms; gender disparity in marriage; domestic violence; multiculturalism and multiracialism; religion; and more. And, together with moments of real-world humor, and an array of cultures beyond those that swirl up in its excerpts, it attempts to ask the ‘what if’--in a time not too far removed from now.

Where do you get your best ideas and why do you think that is?

From just observing each ticking nuance of life--because my maternal Grandmum, herself the wife of a man well in British-run law enforcement, taught me to do just that (although it seems somehow to come quite naturally to me anyway).

Any final words?

My book blog lives at: http://pinkpurseinternational.blogspot.com and currently serves up  morsels of Wifey excerpts, and a tantalizing bit more.


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