Before the pandemic, Deborah Yewande Bankole was on what she describes as a "steady diet of short stories". She loved seeking out emerging writers and admired the work of Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Julia Armfield and Danielle Evans, but had not considered writing one of her own.
So during lockdown, when furloughed from her job as a creative producer, she found herself with the time to sit down and write, and was surprised when what materialised was her own first short story.