What happens when you stop letting old ideas about who you are decide who you’re allowed to become? For this bonus episode of Coffee with Ella, we’re doing things a little differently. After a season spent asking other women about their creative lives, my very first guest, Giselle La Pompe-Moore, returns to turn the microphone around on me. For a long time, I divided the world into people who were creative and people who were academic. I was firmly in the latter camp. I wasn’t a creative kind of girl. Or a sporty kind of girl. Or a nature kind of girl. Except, of course, the creativity was always there. I just didn’t know how to recognise it. Together, we trace the breadcrumbs of my creative life: from growing up in Berlin and moving to Louisiana at 16, to writing, building a Black feminist collective at university, living in Barbados and eventually founding Espresso Press. We talk about the stories we absorb about who we are, following what pulls us even when we don’t know where it leads, the things that look like false starts until we see them in hindsight, and learning to trust and back ourselves along the way. And, on an ordinary Tuesday, we talk about the life I’m trying to build now: more spaciousness, fewer milestones for milestones’ sake, time in nature, good coffee, work I care about, lying completely horizontal before preschool pick-up — and enough room to inhale before I exhale again. Because perhaps a creative life isn’t about becoming a particular kind of person at all. Perhaps it’s about giving ourselves permission to keep discovering who else we might be. In this episode, we talk about: Seeing creativity as a state of being rather than something you doThe childhood creativity I didn’t recognise as creativity at the timeThe stories we absorb about what “kind of person” we areMoving to Louisiana at 16 and beginning to understand how much agency we have in shaping our livesFollowing breadcrumbs without knowing exactly where they’ll leadBuilding an evidence log for things that once felt impossibleWhy I think of writing, podcasting and Espresso Press as different forms of world-buildingMoving from a milestone-driven life towards the ordinary TuesdayBoundaries, people-pleasing and learning that “I don’t want to” can sometimes be enoughFollowing curiosity for the pleasure of it, without demanding an outcomeBuilding Espresso Press and learning to back myself About Ella Achola Ella Achola is a Mother-Writer, host and founder of Espresso Press, a literary non-profit for Black women writers. Born and raised in Berlin and now based in the UK, her work explores creativity, identity, motherhood, belonging and what it means to build a life that feels like your own. She writes Essays for My Daughter, a collection of personal essays documenting motherhood and the woman she is becoming alongside it, and hosts Coffee with Ella, an intimate conversation series exploring creativity not just in what we make but in how we live. Mentioned in this episode Espresso PressEssays for My DaughterThe Oxford Reading TreeMedia DiversifiedThe Black feminist collective Ella founded at universityThe National Writers’ ConferenceBBC Radio 1Xtra and Nadia JaeInsecureGilmore GirlsVictony’s Slick Espresso Press Espresso Press is a new literary non-profit for Black women writers where we publish and platform our stories, craft and authorship, so we can exist in our own way, on our own terms. We’re right at the beginning of building this world. If you’d like to help us bring it to life, you can quite literally buy us a coffee. Every coffee helps us create more opportunities for Black women writers. Espresso Press Instagram: @espresso.pressWebsite: espressopress.orgBuy us a coffee: buymeacoffee.com/espressopress Connect Ella Achola Instagram: @ellaacholaWebsite: ellaachola.com
