.Writers.on.Writing.
Get to know our authors, the foundation and heart of Yellow Arrow Journal, and what writing means to them through our monthly series.
.W.o.W. #78
Gloria Ogo
How did you first publish your writing and what was it?
My first published work is the novel While Men Slept. It was published in Nigeria and approved by the national education board for use in Nigerian universities, colleges of education, and high schools. Since then, I have never stopped writing.
Describe an early experience where you learned that language has power.
When I was in elementary school I remember standing in front of my classmates during a reading exercise. I had always been quiet, the kind of child who preferred observing to speaking, but that day I read aloud a short story I had written. The room grew unexpectedly still. The fact that words I had strung together could hold the attention of 30 restless children stunned me. Afterward, a teacher told me, “Your voice paints pictures,” and I realized that language could move people, not just carry information. It could silence noise, create images, even shift the way others looked at me. That moment taught me that language is not neutral, it has weight, rhythm, and power to shape how we are seen and how we see the world.
What is essential for good storytelling? What types of stories do you find yourself driving inspiration from and how do they manifest in your work?
For me, good storytelling requires honesty, tension, and resonance. A story must feel true on an emotional level even if it unfolds in imagined worlds. I believe what’s essential is the balance between voice, structure, and the deeper pulse of human experience; something that lingers beyond the page. I often draw inspiration from stories that sit at the intersection of reality and the surreal: folktales, speculative fiction, and narratives rooted in history but reimagined through myth or memory. I’m especially drawn to stories that carry the weight of displacement, identity, and transformation because they mirror the complexities of lived experience while also offering a way to dream beyond it. These influences manifest in my work through layered characters, blurred boundaries between the real and the unreal, and imagery that bends the ordinary into something luminous or unsettling.
What does your inner writing voice tell you?
Keep going. You will get there.
Gloria Ogo is an American-based Nigerian writer with several published novels and poetry collections. Her work has appeared in Eye to the Telescope, Brittle Paper, Spillwords Press, Metastellar, CON-SCIO Magazine, Kaleidoscope, The Easterner, Daily Trust, and more. With an MFA in creative writing, Gloria was a reader for Barely South Review. She is the winner of the Brigitte Poirson 2024 Literature Prize and a finalist for the Jerri Dickseski Fiction Prize 2024 and ODU 2025 Poetry Prize, both with honorable mentions. Her work was also longlisted for the 2025 American Short(er) Fiction Prize.
Yellow Arrow published Gloria’s piece “Two Familiar Strangers” as the foreword to Yellow Arrow Journal, Vol. X, No. 2, KAIROS. You can find her online on Facebook @gloria.ekedum and at glriaogo.wixsite.com/gloria-ogo.