Tif Marcelo

Episode 61 of the Stories to Love podcast is up! Our guest today is Sadeqa Johnson.

Sadeqa Johnson is the award-winning author of And Then There Was Me, Second House From the Corner, Love in a Carry-on Bag and Yellow Wife. 

Yellow Wife is a 2022 Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy finalist, a BCALA Literary Honoree, the Library of Virginia’s Literary People’s Choice Award winner, and a Barnes & Noble book club pick in paperback. Her other accolades include winning the National Book Club Conference Award, the Phillis Wheatley Book Award, and the USA Best Book Award for Best Fiction. She is a Kimbilio Fellow and teaches in the MFA program at Drexel University. Originally from Philadelphia, she currently lives near Richmond, Virginia, with her husband and three children.

In this episode, Sadeqa and I discussed how she married family history and a loose YA idea to come up with The House of Eve. We talked about how she navigates history as an author and a second point of view in The House of Eve that begged to be unearthed. Finally we talked about the story within a story that nudged its way into the book

I loved this conversation with Sadeqa, and I took so much away from it, notably how intuitive she is. Her stories, her ideas, the way she pieces parts of The House of Eve together…she was open to these changes. She even had mentioned it with Yellow Wife…that that story chose her, and it was the catalyst that nudged her off the contemporary fiction path to historical fiction. It felt like so many aspects and features of The House of Eve chose her too. 

To me, this episode was a reminder to keep my ears and eyes up. Maybe heed those nudges. Perhaps not self-reject quite as quickly. And as a storyteller, listen to what our characters are trying to say. At the moment, I’m editing my first book in my Harlequin series coming out spring of 2024, and re-listening to this conversation came at a perfect time.

Links discussed:
Our Kind of People by Lawrence Otis Graham
Dorthy Porter
Gladys Bentley
River Sing Me Home by Eleanor Shearer
The Pieces I Am