I Spent a Month Living in a Library in Ghana!

In March 2025, I spent four weeks as a writer in residence at the Library of Africa and the African Diaspora (LOATAD) in Accra, Ghana. It was one of the best experiences of my life as a writer. For an entire month, I was afforded the time and space to focus entirely on my literary life. In addition to all of the reading and writing, I also received feedback on my work, learned a lot about Ghana’s history, culture and literary traditions, and made new friends from throughout the African diaspora. In a nutshell, my residency at LOATAD was a vibe.

 But let me break it down.

The LOATAD Black Atlantic Residency

The Library of Africa and the African Diaspora is a private library located in a suburb of Accra. Founded in 2017 by Sylvia Arthur, a British Ghanaian, the library houses an incredible collection of books by authors across the African diaspora. The library’s mission is to decolonize the literary cannon, and they do this through a series of initiatives and programming, including hosting The Black Atlantic Residency.

The Black Atlantic Residency is a fully-funded residency that lasts for one month. Residents are provided with a bedroom with a private bathroom in the library, two home-cooked meals a day, a travel stipend, and honorarium.

Writers are expected to be working on a particular project during the residency, but there is also programing planned to expose the residents to Ghana’s rich culture and history. Writers are also asked to submit a piece of work at the end of the residency to be published in an anthology.

My Daily Reading + Writing Schedule

I came to the LOATAD residence with a singular goal in mind, and that was to complete the revision on my new novel. I figured if I could work for eight hours a day on the manuscript, I could certainly get the revision done in thirty days.

But the books! There were so many books begging me to read them. Every morning when I walked out of my room, I’d come face to face with bookshelves full of temptation. Bookshelves filled with novels and memoirs by some of my favorite authors, and authors I’ve been dying to read. I had to constantly remind myself that the purpose of this residency was to write not read, but it was to no avail. The books won that battle. Not only did I allow myself to read, I tried to read as much as possible.

Living in Spain, my access to books by Black authors is limited, so I decided to add reading to my residency goals. And in fact, we were visited by a former LOATAD resident who told us that the one thing we had to do during our residency, was to read more than we wrote. As much as I would have LOVED to have spent all of my waking hours gorging myself on the literature of the Black diaspora, I needed to get that manuscript edited.

Therefore my daily schedule living at the library looked something like this:

• Wake up at 6:00am with the crowing of the roosters.

• 6am – 8am Read

• 8am – 10am Write

• Breakfast / chat with the residents

• 11- 1pm – Write

• Lunch

• Break

• 4-6 Write

• 6-7 Group Dinner

• 8-9:30 Write

• 9:30 – 10:30 Journal + Read

• Sleep

Keep in mind, some afternoons were spent exploring Accra, or interacting with guest speakers who came to the library to share their research and/or artistic work. Sometimes we were invited to local literary and social events in the evenings.  Because I’m a homebody, I mostly stayed at the library at night, but other residents took advantage of the many cultural events – from musical theater to film screenings  - that take place in Accra on any given night.  

The Benefits of a Writing Residency

It goes without saying that spending 30 days deeply devoted to writing and reading is going to be a boon to one’s writing life. Because I didn’t have to cook, clean, take care of my kids, or work on my other projects, I was able to truly focus on every sentence I was writing, and I could immerse myself in the books I was reading. I could literally feel my brain operating at higher levels as I engaged with the written word because I wasn’t busy filtering out the noise of my regular life.

But even more significant than having the time and space to do my work, was having the opportunity to get feedback from other writers on my novel manuscript during our weekly feedback sessions. And even more, as I was writing, there were often times I’d get stuck, or have a breakthrough, or even just a question, and I could turn to one of the other writers and ask for their opinion or advice, and instantly have the feedback or validation I needed. This felt like an invaluable resource to me, and deepened my belief that writing in community can be a game changer.

Overall, I’d say the residency helped me uplevel my writing because I had the time and space to pay attention to the details rather than working furiously towards a deadline. I was writing in concert with reading excellent literature which served as inspiration and guide. And because the other residents were all poets, watching their process and reading their work, inspired me to take new risks and play with form and language in new and different ways. By the end of the month, I felt like I had taken a masterclass in living a truly literary life.

For more about my experience in Ghana, visit my YouTube channel @LiteraryLori.