Location: United Kingdom
Member Since: Dec. 30, 2020

1 reader has added this author as a 'Favorite Author'.

Sign in to subscribe to email alerts for Luwa Adebanjo

Luwa Adebanjo

Biography

Luwa Adebanjo is an award-winning poet, writer, actress and theatre-maker from Nottingham. She began reading at a young age and began writing her own novels and poems at the age of 11, since then it has been her dream to be an acclaimed author. After battling with anxiety and depression for most of her life, Luwa was diagnosed with OCD and 19, and began writing about her journey of healing. It’s all been uphill from there (unless you ask her therapist).
Luwa loves art, writing, binge-watching Netflix and board games in equal amounts. She hates celery, having to write her own bio in 3rd person and deadlines in increasing amounts respectively.

When she isn’t writing, according to her friends, Luwa can be found:

- Taking a really long nap. Like, so long that you may as well stay asleep for the night.
- Talking about ‘some social justice stuff’.
- Writing more sapphic poetry.
- Coming up with a really good idea for a play and giving up on it in 12 hours.
- Walking over to someone’s house to have a conversation that could have been a text.

You can read more of Luwa’s work on her Medium page, where she writes about social issues, news, life and else whatever is on her mind.

Praise for A Visitor Who Belongs Here:

"One of the beauties of this type of writing to me is that it teases out all the places where we intersect, the human places that sit deeper than our specifics. I saw myself, or younger versions of myself, in [Adebanjo's] search for identity, her religious doubts, her struggles with an eating disorder, her thoughts on forgiveness, her desperate grasping at that small thread of hope that won't quite leave."- Emily Rainsford

Smashwords Interview

Why did you decide to self-publish?
So for me, self-publishing was a big decision. I ultimately decided to do it because I felt so left out of the traditional publishing world. It is a very inaccessible industry for black people in general. That’s not to say no black person could succeed there, many have despite barriers. Still, it's really hard to get into traditional publishing as someone who doesn't have those connections. A lot of publishing companies wouldn't even see you unless you have an agent, and an agent you need a cover letter. And these cover letters are very very specific in the way that you need to write them, and no one seems to be willing to give you that secret of how to write the letter, without paying them first. So ultimately, I think, self-publishing allowed me to go beyond the barriers of traditional publishing, and tell stories that represent my life and struggles.
What is your writing process like?
My writing changes very much depending on what I'm writing. I’ve published a comedy play as well as my debut poetry anthology and of course my writing process was very different for both. When it comes to my anthology, some of the poems were pre-written because it is sort of semi-autobiographical. So some of the poems I started writing around 13ish and its taken almost a decade to finish them if you think about it- which is wild! Some of the poems were already pre-written, but for the rest, I kind of looked at my anthology like a timeline and thought “What are the gaps that need to be filled in for the story to make sense? And what else does the audience need to know?” And then I sort of titled poems based on what they needed to do to fill in the gap. Sometimes I just sit down and just write whatever comes to mind. Sometimes I take inspiration from other places. Sometimes I kind of have an idea already what the poem could be like, you know, what's going to visually look like or how I want the reader to feel with it. One of the poems in the anthology is called Exodus 20 KJV, and in that one, I tried to make the poem very visually jarring and kind of uncomfortable for the reader because that poem was kind of expressing what it was like for me growing up in a religious household with intrusive thoughts and struggling with my sexuality.
Read more of this interview.

Where to find Luwa Adebanjo online

Website: https://linktr.ee/LuwaAdebanjo
Facebook: Facebook profile
Blog: https://luwaadebanjo.medium.com/

Where to buy in print

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Luwa-Adebanjo/e/B08SKFGLFC/ref=dp_byline_cont_pop_ebooks_1

Books

I Am Not Who I say I Am by
Pre-release—available March 31, 2023. Price: $20.00 USD. Words: 8,460. Language: English. Categories: Poetry » Biography, Fiction » Anthologies » Poetry - general
In the beginning, there was my parent’s marriage; turbulent, forbidden, doomed to end. For those who feel the need to be perfect and who need their 2nd chapter to be better than their 1st. they are not comparable, they are completely different that’s like comparing the New Testament to the Old Testament. Maybe one is better than the other but to be better you just need to be here.
A Vistor Who Belongs Here by
Price: $12.90 USD. Words: 8,440. Language: British English. Published: February 8, 2021. Categories: Poetry » Female authors, Poetry » Gay & lesbian
"I cannot explain just how much this poetry anthology makes me feel... It both destroys me and heals me, makes me laugh and makes me cry, soothes me and unnerves me. It's honest, raw, and is the closest I've ever felt to being in another person's body." Emily Elizebeth Ash A Visitor Who Belongs Here is Luwa Adebanjo’s debut poetry anthology all about home, belonging and the joy of surviving.
We're Here for Laura by
Price: $4.00 USD. Words: 9,520. Language: English. Published: December 31, 2020. Categories: Plays » Women Authors
Laura Penbrooke is dead. Her four closest friends can't wait to milk her tragedy for all it is worth. No one more so than Mitton, Laura's bestie, who arranges a simple dinner to remember her BBFL. So what if her camera crew just happens to be around filming her reality show? That's just showbiz, baby! And if Paul wants to plug their one-person opera, that's a great distraction from Carol's monoton

Luwa Adebanjo's tag cloud

black    black woman    black writer    cerebral    comedy    drama    growth    healing    lesbian    lgbt    lgbt writer    lgbt writers    lgbtq    life    life lessons    love    ocd    play    poetry    reality tv    theatre    women   

Luwa Adebanjo's favorite authors on Smashwords

Rachel Lynn McGuire
Latest book: Stay.
Published February 6, 2021.
Follow them on Twitter: @RachelLM
Visit their website
View their blog