The Downsides
N/A Oparah
The Downsides is an exploration of fear, doubt, and worry as the guides and love languages they are and can be. Distilling and objectifying the harder parts of life, Oparah's second book is a reflection on the ways loss happens and stains. It permits and extends mourning—dismissing silver linings, "at least," and hope as ways out of the present. The Downsides is about remaining exactly where you are, looking at that space, and letting the body feel and name all the ways it is real. It is a conscious, intentional meditation on the heavy, burdensome things we are asked to forget, forgive, move on from, keep, and protect.
Praise for The Downsides
Visceral and urgent. The Downsides confidently pushes language to capture deeply felt experience, and as it moves, the prose begins to wrap itself intensely around a reader, too.
— Aimee Bender
In this sly, soulful collection, N/A Oparah carefully crafts an experiment in rhythm, language, and story for us to partake in. The Downsides leaves us with a sense of urgency yet embraces us in its raw power.
— Gabriela Jauregui
About the Author
Ngozi "N/A" Oparah, PhD is a queer, first-generation Nigerian-American writer. She has received residencies in writing, art, and narrative media from Can Serrat, Proyecto Lingüistico Quetzalteco, and HANGAR. Ngozi currently serves as a lecturer on the MASc in Creative Health at UCL and facilitates storytelling and writing workshops worldwide. She is an assistant fiction editor for Foglifter Literary Magazine and the founder of TELLMORE, a multimedia storytelling and design project. Her first novella, Thick Skin, was published by Kernpunkt Press in 2021.
The Downsides is an exploration of fear, doubt, and worry as the guides and love languages they are and can be. Distilling and objectifying the harder parts of life, Oparah's second book is a reflection on the ways loss happens and stains. It permits and extends mourning—dismissing silver linings, "at least," and hope as ways out of the present. The Downsides is about remaining exactly where you are, looking at that space, and letting the body feel and name all the ways it is real. It is a conscious, intentional meditation on the heavy, burdensome things we are asked to forget, forgive, move on from, keep, and protect.
Praise for The Downsides
Visceral and urgent. The Downsides confidently pushes language to capture deeply felt experience, and as it moves, the prose begins to wrap itself intensely around a reader, too.
— Aimee Bender
In this sly, soulful collection, N/A Oparah carefully crafts an experiment in rhythm, language, and story for us to partake in. The Downsides leaves us with a sense of urgency yet embraces us in its raw power.
— Gabriela Jauregui
About the Author
Ngozi "N/A" Oparah, PhD is a queer, first-generation Nigerian-American writer. She has received residencies in writing, art, and narrative media from Can Serrat, Proyecto Lingüistico Quetzalteco, and HANGAR. Ngozi currently serves as a lecturer on the MASc in Creative Health at UCL and facilitates storytelling and writing workshops worldwide. She is an assistant fiction editor for Foglifter Literary Magazine and the founder of TELLMORE, a multimedia storytelling and design project. Her first novella, Thick Skin, was published by Kernpunkt Press in 2021.