Nigerian author's encounter with jellyfish in Sharjah inspires her Binti sci-fi series

The stories that connect most widely do not have to begin by trying to appeal to everyone, bestselling science fiction and fantasy author Nnedi Okorafor told school students at the Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF) 2026. Instead, young writers should trust the cultures, experiences and details that make their stories distinctly their own.

Speaking during the session ‘The Future Doesn’t Have to Look Like Someone Else’s’, Okorafor encouraged students to ask questions throughout the interactive conversation, which explored her unexpected path to becoming a writer, the role of cultural identity in storytelling and how young people can develop confidence in their own creative voices.

“The best stories are the specific ones,” she said. “The more specific a story is, the more people tend to understand it. It sounds like a contradiction.”

Okorafor, who was born and raised in the United States to Nigerian parents, said specificity was central to her own development as a writer. For eight years, she wrote without trying to get published, creating stories into which she could “pour all of my thoughts and emotions and everything that I had experienced culturally as a Nigerian American”.

She urged aspiring writers not to assume that a story has less value simply because they cannot see similar work already being published.

“There’s always someone who’s interested in your story,” she told the students. “The more detailed the story is, the more it becomes its own story, and the better it becomes.”

“Do not let fear keep you from telling your story,” she added.

An unexpected path into storytelling 

Okorafor also shared how writing entered her life unexpectedly. A competitive athlete from childhood, she had imagined a future centred on sport rather than literature. When she was 19, spinal surgery left her temporarily paralysed from the waist down.

While recovering in hospital, unable to concentrate on a copy of Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot, she picked up a pen and began writing creatively for the first time. The story that emerged was about a girl who could fly.

“When you can fly, you don’t have to walk,” she recalled. “That was when I discovered storytelling.”

She eventually regained movement and had to relearn how to walk, returning to university with a cane and continuing to write the stories she had begun. “The darkness that had been descending on me through that whole experience immediately went away once I started writing,” she said.

Protecting human creativity

When a student asked for advice on becoming a better storyteller, Okorafor’s first recommendation was direct: “Do not use AI.”

“I’m not anti-AI, but I’m pro-human, and I’m pro-earth, and I’m pro-creativity,” she explained. “The process of thinking and the process of creating, the work of it, that’s where the magic happens.”