Authors' Matters by ALCS
Authors' Matters is a podcast by the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) where we talk to writers from across the profession about how they earn their living, or at least try to. From copyright to contracts, we’ll also talk about issues that make the writing living easier or more difficult.
Authors' Matters by ALCS
Season 3, episode 3: Jeffrey Boakye on his writing adventures and where he's going next
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Author and educator Jeffrey Boakye joins us for episode 3 where he shares how he manages being a full-time writer with primary school teaching (spoiler: he doesn't) and talks us through his latest works and the goals for social justice behind each one.
Welcome to Authors Matters, a podcast from the Authors Licensing and Collecting Society. I'm Caroline Sanderson, and I'm a writer and books journalist. In this episode of Authors Matters, we talk to Geoffrey Boacci. Originally from Brixton in South London, he's an author, broadcaster, educator, and journalist who taught in secondary schools for more than 15 years. Now the author of books for adults and children. His work ranges across genres, but in themes it majors on issues surrounding education, race, and popular culture, especially music. He also co-presents BBC Radio 4's Add to the Playlist with Karis Matthews. Welcome to Authors Matters, Jeffrey. So for a long time you've combined writing with other things for teaching for quite a while. Yeah. And now broadcasting. So how do those things work together? Do they sort of stimulate? Do you find this kind of cross-stimulation going on?
SPEAKER_01They don't work together. No. They don't work together. Not originally. I was I was trying to become the world's first flexi time teacher. I really had a good go at it around the time when um Blacklisted came out. I was going down the path of being a full-time author and being a full-time teacher. But teaching isn't particularly flexible, it's not that forgiving. So it wasn't quite working, which is frustrating because those two headspaces were quite complementary, actually, to be in there with successive generations and ideas and teaching and learning, and then creating, you know, works that are kind of you know trying to make sense of the world at the same time. So yeah, in a weird sort of way, it was a very, very useful time to be doing everything, but then the practicalities have meant that I've had to kind of step away from the classroom, but I'm still very much in education, lecturing at Manchester University, visiting schools all the time, doing training, working kids and workshops and so on. You can't really shake it, you know. It's hard to shake education once that's become one of your homes, if that makes any sense.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it makes perfect sense. And and we know a lot of writers do do teaching alongside their writing. I can see that the secondary school job is less compatible than, say, the lecturing that you're doing. But how do you find it? Because I mean, a secondary school teacher, it's a it's a career, it's a vocation, it's a full-time job. And now you're stepping into a world which is much more blurred than that, because the world of the world of a writer is often about combining lots of different jobs at once. I mean, most of us working writers have to do that to make a living.
SPEAKER_01Exactly, yeah. The portfolio career, as I've heard it described, yeah. This idea that you've got more than one thing happening at the same time, different revenue streams. I mean, part of it is actually quite practical, you know, because what it means is that I have a level of autonomy, which is really important, especially when I'll be blunt, like sometimes I feel as though I'm not cradled by the one industry. So to put all the eggs into that one basket feels like a bit of a risk. Whereas to have different things happening at the same time allows me to kind of go on my own various themes. But then at the same time, writing is something that I often don't lead with I'm a writer, even though I do a lot of writing, because the writing is making sense of the living. I feel like you know how stand-up comedians always say you have to go and do some living in order to have material. To me, that's the same as writing. I can't just out of nothing create a project. It needs to be responding to something or trying to manage an idea or or being provocative, but it needs to have purchase on something, and that's where having another life or other existences is actually the foundation of the stuff that I end up writing. That's all very meta, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00Well, it is, but that makes total sense about writing being the sort of product of the different jobs that you've done, the different lives that you've lived, and and kind of who you are. I suppose that's the same for all us writers. Yeah. It might be quite a good moment actually to talk about your your first novel for children, which is uh not long been out. It's called Kofi and the Rap Battle Summer. So there's your music right there, as I mentioned. But you've written that you wanted it to be everything you loved about stories growing up. So what was that that you loved?
SPEAKER_01Just a sense of escapism. That's a huge part of it. Not that I had anything particularly awful to escape from, but I loved the idea that you could lose yourself in worlds, it's every cliche, but they're all true. You know, a book is a portal to another world, all that kind of stuff. I just loved having access to a library of books that could take me to places that I never visited. So I wanted to do that for young readers, and the place that it takes them is an estate in South London. Doesn't sound very glamorous, doesn't sound particularly literary, but it's a magical world, and that was something that I loved in the books that I read when I was growing up as well, where you enter worlds that feel special, and it didn't have to be fantastic worlds or like mythical worlds, it just could be a city in a in a country I'd never visited, or somewhere in this country that I wasn't used to. So the idea of entering unfamiliar spaces that's always been attractive to me. So I wanted to do that, and that's why I set in the 90s as well, because the 90s is like well, you know, another time, another place. Another time, another place, it's period drama for these kids, you know. It might as well be the Victorian era, four channels on TV. Are you crazy? You know, so I've always been drawn to stories that invited me into other realms, and I also just love I love adventure, you know, I love the episodic adventure nature of a lot of kids literature where you're going on missions and things are happening, and the adventure is kind of where the character grows. So I really wanted Kofi to be on a journey and to learn about himself and his worlds through those adventures and those journeys, and then also I just like the fact that it's a chance to get into you know some of the music and stuff that I grew up listening to and entering those cultural worlds. So there's a reason why music is so central to this particular instalment because yeah, Kofi enters a world of music that he just was not used to, and that's super exciting for him. And when you read it, hopefully, readers, it'll be super exciting for readers too.
SPEAKER_00Oh, it's fantastically entertaining for me, and I don't get the chance to uh read kids' books very often now. It's interesting though, because you're talking about transporting kids to another time and another world, but also I sense that there's something else going on, and it's something that's talked about a lot, isn't it? In terms of that phrase, you know, you you can't be what you what you don't see.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I mean, I think you you've also said that you're deliberately trying to make it the kind of book that you never had and never read. So in as much as it's it's a kind of inspired by a lot of the reading that you had, yeah, there was still something missing in in the reading that you that you had access to.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely, absolutely. What I wanted was a book that felt like all those pastoral kids' novels that I grew up reading that were part of the canon, you know, set in rural parts of England where people are climbing trees and like scrumping for apples and all that kind of magic of the rural idol, but I wanted to set it in an urban environment like the one that I grew up in because there's nothing wrong with growing up on an estate. It's not an automatic point of deprivation and kind of social despair. I had a great childhood growing up on an estate surrounded by concrete. I had a lot of fun, there were adventures, there were characters, there were people to support me and my like wider network. And I've not really seen any kids' book that treated that particular type of upbringing with the respect that I feel every upbringing needs, you know. And I didn't want it to be a gritty slice of urban drama about all the things that can go wrong in an urban environment, you know. So it's not, it's not top boy, you know, it's like someone running around a forest. It just so happens to be estate walkways, you know, people's flats, underground car parks. So that was a big part of it. It's a celebration.
SPEAKER_00Well, particularly with black characters absolutely at the centre of it, because we want to talk about marginalized voices, aren't we? And we want to talk about the sort of urban deprivation and the things that go wrong in people's lives, particularly people from ethnic minority backgrounds. So, I mean, it's a fantastic community that we have a sense of in the book, and and also the kind of like slightly crazy extended family that KB belongs to. But there's a great deal of joy and playfulness in what's going on. I mean, he's he has his troubles at school, but he's basically a very bright boy fizzing with energy and creativity, and it's realistic as well.
SPEAKER_01So I always sense a joy and honesty, like those are the two things that drive me. They're the dual pistons of all my work. And honesty means that you have to deal with realism. Like I never want to patronize readers, especially young readers. So the reality is there is deprivation, there isn't a lot of money, but these things aren't the focal point and they're not debilitating. But you know, he lives in a flat and there isn't quite enough room. And I make a point of describing these situations where they have to make it work and there isn't quite enough space to do this, or he hasn't got the money for X and Y and Z. Because that's realistic. That's how I grew up, you know. So the realism aspect is really important. The police are one of the antagonistic threats in the story. Because realistically, I grew up in Brixton in the 1980s, there were uprisings because of the police. We're having conversations now about a lack of trust in the police for the same reason. So not much has changed in 40 years. So this is the kind of realism that I'm speaking to, whilst at the same time centering the joy, because also in that childish way of looking at the world, you're not there kind of looking around and identifying social problems. You're just worrying about what's that next song on the radio that I love, or can I talk to my friend at school and you know what's the best flavour crisps? You know, all these, and and so that joy is something which is really driving it forward. But if you read it properly, you'll get the realism too.
SPEAKER_00I see, as you're talking, I can sort of hear and I can kind of feel, I think, the way in which that teaching experience, and by teaching experience, I suppose I mean that day-in, day-out experience of kids and how they behave and what their preoccupations are, and what makes them tick, what makes them respond, and what just kind of sends them into stupor. So, you know, you it feels like you have a very fine sense of that, and I'm going to refer to one of your books for grown-ups now. I heard what you said: A Black Teacher, a white system, a revolution in education. So, this is a book where you're really writing and digging deep into your experiences as well, a black English teacher in, as you say, a profession where 86% of English teachers are white women. Yeah. So you really were something different, let's say. You know, in the schools where you work.
SPEAKER_01I'm technically a white woman.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. You should be, and you're not. But what's interesting about this, I think, is in terms of what you've been talking about, you write about school subjects really as just being, it's all about a gateway to the conversations that need to be had and the ways in which you can help kids navigate the world and providing a safe space for difficult conversations that need to be had. So, in as much as you're centering the joy and the playfulness, and I know you brought all that into your days in the classroom, yeah, it is also about creating those safe spaces for those conversations, and and difficult conversations do need to be had.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, definitely. I heard you said it's all about that kind of reflective space, pausing to go, well, what just happened there after 15 years of being a teacher in a majority white system in a country that is still struggling to have sensible conversations about race and identity politics. So that particular book, it kind of speaks to essays of thought, kind of critical, provocative, trying to make sense of lived experiences that I've had. And the way to do that, ironically almost, is via my story, like my narratives. You've got these scenes, you know, leading with things that I've heard said to me or said around me, and so these vignettes become the jumping off point for basically essays on identity and the sector, and then because education, society, and social justice. So, yeah, that's that's that. As I'm talking, it's really interesting because Kofi is almost an inverted version of the same thing because Kofi it leads with a story, but in the subtext, there are essays in there about these issues, you know, about very deliberate things, like Kofi's mum is Jamaican and his dad is Ghanaian. That is not an accident, that's an essay on the black British community and how different communities within Black Britain have not coexisted.
SPEAKER_00It's not one story, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01It's not one story, and so I've very deliberately made things happen that speak to these essays that I like to write. So you could actually flip Kofi and turn it into a book of essays for adults. Maybe I'll do that one day.
SPEAKER_00Yes, that that that I'd like to read as well. But it goes back to what I was saying at the beginning about you know, you it's interesting as a writer how you can range across genres and be very versatile, which you are, but it comes down to the themes of the saying, the prevailing themes and the things that preoccupy you.
SPEAKER_01Always, always. It's it's what you've lived and what you know, and then your insights become quite valuable. And then as time goes on, you think, I think this is really worth putting into the world before it's too late to put it into the world, and then that becomes the impetus to start a new project, I suppose.
SPEAKER_00And I think because you're used to making conversations happen, that's such a valuable skill because after all, that's what we need. So your writing is very deliberately not defensive, not forlorn, not, you know, this is come on, this is something that we need to do. Yeah, we may need to make change.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, definitely. It's the best of me and the worst of me. You need to know the best of yourself and the worst of yourself because the same thing. I'm a people pleaser, ta-da! That's it, and that is the best of me because it means that I'm agonizing over drawing people in, drawing people out into a space where we can be together and to find that shared experience. And that's what a teacher has to be able to do because you're putting kids into a stress position, learn about this stuff that you don't want to learn about, so then you've got to be able to coax and to tease, but then you're also like you know, being someone that's provoking and causing difficulty, like new new ideas. A lot of my writing, that thing that you learn as a teacher is one of the things that I reach for first in terms of how to engage and how to create conversations, and actually, really, it's like you can engage people via their opinions, you know, that's a really big thing. Just what do you think about something? Their imagination is a huge way of engaging people just to get them to think about something creatively, their core values, and again, I often lead with core values, so I know that humans love, I know that humans want to see justice, I know humans understand what injustice looks and feels like. These are basic core values that people have, so you can lean into those areas, and that becomes something of a way of getting into these conversations that I want to get into, because otherwise you could lead to other things like trying to win an argument, you know. But I'll just end up hurting my hand if I punch a wall, or trying to be popular, then I end up just writing what I think is gonna sell a lot, which might do well for me and commercially, but it's not the real conversation I want to have. So you've got to be careful about what you're appealing to. And I know well, I I think I know that I'm appealing to something quite inherently human, deep. This is deep, Caroline.
SPEAKER_00I was just thinking also, it's about being true to yourself as a writer, isn't it? Because if we have to make as living as writers, there's there's always a thought that, well, we could do that, and it might be, it might be more lucrative or it might be more commercial. And there's a there's a sort of trade-off there, isn't there? And and publishers sort of think, oh, well, this is this is what we want, but don't always know what they want. So it's it's it's about standing up for yourself, I think, sometimes as a writer, isn't it? And saying, no, this is what I really I really need to do. And this is yeah, but then you kind of have to be a bit ahead of the curve because a lot of people are in the business are playing catch-up, I think.
SPEAKER_01Exactly, exactly. No one knows what's gonna be a best seller, otherwise you just churn them out, wouldn't you? Surely you just get AI to do it, which might happen. Ah, scary thought. Um, but if we knew, it'll be straightforward and catching those conversations. Sometimes, sometimes you're making the conversation happen. I often feel like I'm late to the party when I'm writing a project, and it turns out that the party hasn't started and isn't gonna start for another five years, you know? And I feel like that's that's always a bit of a lesson to me that I've that I keep not learning. That actually when I think I'm late to the party, people don't even know there's gonna be a party in that particular area.
SPEAKER_00But I think there are things that have been preoccupying you for probably a time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And the other thing as well is I'm with my teacher hat on, I'm often writing to model a way that other people can enter the conversation on their own terms. And I say that to people, but no one's picked me up on it yet. Like when I wrote Blacklisted, I was basically telling the world go and write your list of labels for you, and then write your version of Blacklisted, because I really think that's a valuable thing for the world to have, for everyone to unpick their identity however they want to, and then to analyze it in this way. So I wrote a blueprint there. No one's done it yet, because I don't know, they think it's a one-off, whatever. But it's the same with I heard what you said, it's like it's a conceit that I've sort of seen before, but not quite done in the way that I've done it. I'm like, go and list your phrases of things that made you think about your identity in a professional capacity and then turn it into a narrative of essays. It's a blueprint, you know. But I don't know, maybe overthink it.
SPEAKER_00I was actually about to mention your book, Blacklisted, Black British Culture Explored. It's such a brilliant, it's a lexicon of words that in some way have in some way come to define black identity. As a white woman who lives in the Cotswolds, I felt like an alien in this book, but I loved it. You know, I mean I think anybody who loves words, yeah, and your your love of words, I'm I know you love rap and you know grime, and the inventiveness of lyrics and music. So it's it's a hugely entertaining book with a deadly serious point as well. And I feel it it says something about the power of language, doesn't it, and the way that we use it, and I guess the mastery we have to have over it as writers, but how it's also constantly changing, and what we hear, what we understand is also constantly changing.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I suppose that comes back also to you know, if you have kids, if you teach kids, you know that they they talk different from you, they're a different generation. It's a crap, too.
SPEAKER_01It's a marvelous moment when in real time you instantly get old when you listen to a conversation from some younger people and you realize you don't understand the words that they're saying, and you just get old like like in a Spielberg movie or something, like you know, you turn to dust and the sunlight hits you, you uh that to me is always fascinating because there's a generational thing going on as well, and giving yourself that distance to understand and unpick is I find it very energizing personally, but yeah, blacklisted, it was yeah, it was a it was a vivisection of black identity from my very particular vantage point, you know, rather than an objective truth, it was how I feel about black identity as I've lived it, and just picking apart from every conceivable angle, which I found personally completely edifying, like so rewarding because I learned a lot. I learned a lot writing it, and I reflected on things that I'd never thought about, like, you know, where does that word come from? Then you find something out and you suddenly see yourself with a bit more definition. So, yeah, it was a gift to myself and hopefully to the rest of the world, you know.
SPEAKER_00All those cultural histories through words, and it and it just says something about I think the importance of writing, the importance of stories, and all of that. And yet, you know, ALCS is an organization that has to work hard to defend the rights of writers and promote copyright and the value of copyright, and advocate really for creativity and it and its place in our society. And and I think a lot of us feel that that is that is under threat. So, do you want to say something about your Take on that, and I guess also the things that have helped you along the way as a writer.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes. I just feel like knowing your highest point of contribution to society is probably the end game for any person. And what I see in writers who I respect, what I aspire to myself, is to give my highest point of contribution to our shared society through these reflections, through these narratives, through these, through these provocations, through these essays, through everything that I write. And writing for me is constantly pushing towards that. So do I have a perspective that is useful for other people for the ages? The answer is yes. Everyone has a perspective that's useful. Whatever your identity pie chart looks like, you're going to have a particular angle that you see the world from. It's actually very, very valuable. We forget to remind ourselves that every single person has got a very particular angle of looking at the world because our experiences are so varied. And it's stuff that most of us wouldn't think about because we don't stop to consider what someone else's experiences are, you know, be it their ethnicity, their gender, their sexuality, any of the protected characteristics or other things like the experiences they've had, traumas that people have been through that give them a particular view of the world. When you go left at the hospital, when you go into that other room and you see the world differently suddenly. So writers writing stories, they do that. They they offer a vantage point, you know. I've spoken about this before. This idea of being marginalized, having a story from the edges, strong euphemism because actually it's it's a vantage point. You can see the center from up high or from down there or from further away. So you've got this very useful telling perspective. And if you then go to the trouble of turning that into art, then those things they're valuable. It's probably why books still exist as something that people value. Because I'm not being funny, why would people value the weird Bendy Wood in the age of iPads? Like, why do people who still care about literature and publishings? Because they are doing something, you know, very, very, very important. Yeah, that's a long answer to a straightforward question.
SPEAKER_00Oh no, I think you articulate that beautifully, and it's a question we have to keep asking ourselves because you know, every day we'll we're assailed by information um from so many different sources, and sometimes we have to pause and make the case for longer form, for books, yeah, for stories, for pausing and taking those in and thinking about them. And it it feels more and more important, even in this age of AI, where we're being told that you know we don't need writers to do that anymore.
SPEAKER_01But it's hard to imagine that in terms of those personal stories, and then to to also to work out what your agenda sounds too pointed and cynical, so it might be the wrong word, but what your personal stand is, because if you cut everything right back to the core truth and the core joy of you and your life, then the angle that you take on the world is going to be hopefully useful, benevolent, rather than if you're doing it for other reasons. So I suppose what I'm trying to say there is I write books that I feel like are speaking to a truth, my truth, at the same time, I'm entering into conversations that I feel like I do have a strong position on that I can say into the world and feel confident that you know that what I'm saying is is right and true. Like I am anti-racist, for example, so that is a deliberate thing that I will do in my writing. I'll be anti-racist, you know, I'm anti-sexist. I think about that. I'm again I'm I'm very anti lots of things, by the way. All all all the bad things, I'm anti them. So I would deliberately try to make sure that these things are expressed in my work too, and also do the other thing of make sure that I don't accidentally contribute to some of the damaging ideologies that have become normalized in our society, you know, which is a very easy thing to do because these are big waves and the undercurrents are very strong. You can be very accidentally, you know, homophobic, misogynistic, white supremacist, classist, ableist, all the rest of it, just because that's the world that we live in. You know, so I these things keep me up at night too, and it gets me thinking hard about the construction of characters and stories.
SPEAKER_00And it's interesting earlier when you were talking about we were talking about all the different jobs that you have, essentially. Broadcaster, and and but you said, well, I don't automatically say first that I'm a writer, but actually what you've articulated there is that writing is kind of the pinnacle, it's what everything else feeds into.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. And it's where the material comes from as well. Well, it's where the material ends up, like your life is the material and it ends up in writing, which is great, which is why I'm so I'm so excited about getting into fiction because you start to mine your life and your experiences in interesting ways. That's just very exciting. There's there's a lot of me in Kofi and Rap Battle Summer, not in Kofi even necessarily, but other characters in the relationship with the world and so on. Kelvin's a lot like me, you know. Kelvin's Kofi's best friend who has a stutter. He's he's a lot like me.
SPEAKER_00I like Kelvin.
SPEAKER_01Kelvin's cool.
SPEAKER_00We so commonly put writers into categories, don't we? We say you're a children's writer and and and they write novels and they write non-fiction and they write for TV. And quite apart from the fact that so many writers are doing more than one of these things, it shows that writing is it's not a it's not about categories, it's about that that continuum of ideas and conversations.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, definitely, definitely. And what I quite like is again, teaching's been a real gift for me because I learned a lot about myself and the way that I interact with the world through teaching. And you realize that everyone's a kid, everyone's got that young person in them, that child who is looking at the world with curiosity and you know, inquisitiveness and wonder and trepidation. And so a lot of time when I write, I find myself writing to the child in everyone, and it focuses my attention as well. Because what I love about young people as an audience is that they're not that polite, you know. If you're boring, if you're overbearing, if if you've got a clear agenda and you're not respecting the ideas of others, they'll let you know in some shape, way, or form. The younger you go, the quicker they'll let you know. When I do sessions, I've done sessions for like year one kids, it's so good. They'll just get up and walk off or just start shouting. So it really you've got to think really hard about the audience. And I feel like sometimes writing for adults, you kind of overly lean on the fact that adults are very polite and they'll stick around, but then in their mind they've checked out. So I like the engagement game that kids force out of you, and I think my writing has that kind of energy to it, which hopefully makes it quite readable as well.
SPEAKER_00Well, Jeffrey Bobacci, thank you for a very not boring conversation.
SPEAKER_01Thank you so much, and thank you again for inviting me on. It's um it's an absolute privilege, so thank you.
SPEAKER_00We aim to reflect the views of a wide variety of authors on our podcast, but their views are of course their own. Check out more episodes of Authors Matters wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening, and please join us next time. Goodbye.