T. J. Benson

T. J. Benson is a Nigerian writer and portrait photographer. Benson was a runner-up for the Short Story Day Africa Prize in 2016. His stories have appeared in literary magazines including Catapult and Transition Magazine. In 2018 he published We Won't Fade into Darkness, a collection of science and fantasy fiction short shories. The stories can be seen as an example of Africanfuturism. Benson was an invited guest at the 2018 Aké Arts and Book Festival, moderating two panel discussions centered around filmmaking. He published his debut novel, The Madhouse, in 2021.

Quotes

• If Ben Okri’s writing did not exist I don’t think I would have come as far as I did, in my craft generally. I wouldn’t have been able to personalize writing in the context of African spirituality.
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• Is the world deserving of my personal story?
  • [2]

• I feel like some of the most talented of us have stopped. Because—what was happening? Which publishers were interested in our manuscripts then? Where are you submitting that is going to pay you? Maybe there is one small prize and then everybody is fighting for 30K, 50K, and then that’s all. And I want to assure you that we really pushed.
  • [3]

• The greatest joys of my career. You know when people who wrote stories in my writing classes get published in places that rejected me. I can’t tell you, I’m smiling now. It’s more of facilitating.
  • [4]

The Mad House

• Sprinkled with stars the sky seemed wider, and the moon was so large they could see the imprinted face of Mother Mary looking down on baby Jesus.
  • [5]

• You know a place is in-between the physical realm and our psychological experience; it’s about how much psychological landscape I can cover in one geographical location. Places work with the writer to produce stories.
  • [6]

• I don’t know any Nigerian book of literature that has touched on that, anybody who lived in Kaduna would tell you they knew someone who disappeared in that crisis. But we don’t question it. People feel like it’s in the past, it’s too far away, history. Some of these major events that happened in the ’90s are not archived. In a way, The Madhouse and most of my longer pieces are a sort of archiving of these. My focus is people of my age. I want us to remember what it was like in the ’90s.
  • [7]