“On Chiselling, Pruning and Trimming: Chika Unigwe in Conversation [with Elisabeth Bekers and VUB students] about Better Never Than Late.” Transcribed by Emre Ok.

Chika Unigwe is a writer of fiction, poetry and educational books and regularly contributes to newspapers in different continents. Her most recent work is a collection of short stories entitled Better Never Than Late (2019), the work on which this conversation focuses. This interview originally took place during a webinar in the context of the “Postcolonial Literature in English” Master course taught by Prof. dr. Elisabeth Bekers at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in the autumn of 2020. Students in the “Master Taal- en Letterkunde” and the international “Multilingual Master in Linguistics and Literary Studies” introduced the author to the guests in the audience (which included colleagues and students from VUB and beyond) and prepared and asked the questions. Participants were invited to ask questions or share their observations regarding passages in the text that spoke to them in particular. Emre Ok subsequently transcribed the interview, which was later edited by Elisabeth Bekers.