…My Journey to The Lagos Review Writing Weekend
For a long time, I imagined writers who attended workshops had reached some level of certainty about their craft.
So when the email arrived announcing that fifteen writers had been selected from 114 submissions for the Lagos Review Writing Weekend, I read it twice, as if to catch a mistake. I had never attended a writing workshop before. For a few hours, I let myself enjoy the news without questioning whether I deserved it.
By Wednesday morning, the questions had begun.
What if everyone else knew what they were doing except me?
My mother drove me to Adna Hotel in Ikeja. It was not a particularly busy day. The sun was scorching, though light showers fell intermittently. I sat beside her, watching Lagos pass without taking much in. She talked, but my mind was already at the workshop. Every so often, she asked whether I had packed everything. Had I forgotten something? Was I sure? By the third or fourth time, I began to question her trust in my packing abilities at all.
We stopped at a filling station for fuel. While she attended to the car, I took a selfie in my Manchester City jersey and posted it, declaring Mancity the best club in the world. A male colleague asked why I was not at work. I explained that I was on leave. For a moment, I was back in the familiar world of work messages and football banter, where, at least, I knew what I was doing.
At Chicken Republic, we bought jollof rice and chicken for later. I would eat when I arrived at the hotel. After checking in, I discovered I had been assigned Room 114, the same number as the submissions received for the workshop. I laughed at the coincidence, briefly tempted to interpret it as a sign.
I prayed, ate, and lay down. Rain soon began beating against the roof, and I slept through the downpour. For a while, my anxiety went quiet.
The classes covered essays, film, music, and book reviews, facilitated by Oris Aigbokhaevbolo, Akumbu Uche, Dr. Eghosa, Mr. Toni Kan aka T.K., and Mr. Adewale Maja-Pearce. I discovered that reviewing art required more than deciding whether I liked something. It demanded attention, and sometimes the courage to say what I did not like.
Naturally, I prefer balanced reviews, always searching for something good to say. Deborah was different. She could dismantle everything she thought was wrong with a piece, and the worst part was that I often agreed with her. I simply could not be so blunt. She and Lateefah became my regular companions, the bad cops to my good cop. Between serious discussions, we sneaked selfies on Deborah’s laptop.
The other writers kept surprising me with what they noticed in stories and other works of art. Sometimes, their observations took me somewhere I had not thought to look. I listened, spoke when I could, and tried to absorb as much as possible. Even when I had something to contribute, I often left a discussion with the sense that there was still so much I had not seen.
By Friday, familiar faces had begun to feel like home. Akumbu Uche noticed that we were settling into our little circles instead of making an effort to know everyone. So, for a podcast exercise discussing Mallam Sile, she paired me with Mariam and Seyi. Mariam named our group Naija Reads Podcast. It was a small intervention, but it gave me the chance to talk and work with other brilliant minds.
The next evening, we gathered at Rovingheights for a book reading. I read an excerpt from my then-unpublished novel, The Inheritance of Days, straight from my phone. Mariam and Charity took it upon themselves to photograph me. I am not usually one to seek out a camera, but they kept adjusting angles, and insisting on one more picture. I laughed and posed, eventually giving in to their enthusiasm. After I told Mr. T.K. about the novel, he kindly offered to write a blurb for it.
By Sunday morning, I did not want to leave. My mother returned to pick me up, and this time I talked all the way home. The daughter who had barely listened on Wednesday now had several days of stories to tell.
I had written an early version of this essay during Dr. Eghosa’s session. When I showed it to Oris, he had reservations about the writing but liked the title.
“At Adna, with a pen,” he said. “Lovely.”
I kept it. The hotel’s network had been terrible, so while others typed, I wrote page after page by hand.
I left with new friendships, a blurb for my now-published novel, and a phone full of photographs I had not expected to take.
The network never improved. My pen did.
***Hubaidat Ishola is a Nigerian writer and landscape artist. She is the winner of the Quramo Writers’ Prize 2025 and was longlisted for the 2026 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. She is currently rounding off her master’s degree in Environmental Management at the University of Lagos. When she is not writing, she enjoys reading, painting, and, more recently, exploring poetry. The Inheritance of Days is her debut novel and she was a member of the inaugural cohort of the Lagos Review Writing Weekend (2026).