"We know climate change is happening, but I never thought I could make any dent or any impact in that space", says British Nigerian author Abi Daré.
Yet, in May Daré won the inaugural Climate Fiction Prize for her second novel, ‘And So I Roar’. It's a powerful story about finding your voice and providing better futures for women and girls in rural villages, like the one Daré’s protagonist, Adunni, is from in Nigeria. Winning the prize was something Daré never expected, but which she explains fills her with gratitude and joy, as we're speaking over video call while she's visiting family in Lagos.
By winning, she says it "shows that stories from all over the world, from Africa, from Nigeria, matter. And that people have heard the voices of the girls because they were roaring in the book, as the title says. That means a lot to me."
Born in Nigeria, Daré has lived in Britain for 25 years, longer than she lived in Nigeria. With a degree in law, she says she "couldn't see any Black female lawyers that were thriving in the field," so pursued a career in project management in London, and later completed a masters in creative writing. "I wasn't going to be a climate writer," she says, but uses her law background to write about "social injustice and the issues affecting us as humans".
Daré is recognised on The Independent’s Climate 100 2025 List, which recognises the artists, innovators and campaigners leading in the fight against the climate crisis.
Daré was looking to write the sequel to The Girl With The Louding Voice (a New York Times best-seller in 2020), and wanted to write about education for girls. It's a recurring theme for Daré, as the protagonist of both of her novels is Adunni, a 14-year-old in Nigeria, who was desperate for an education. The story resonated with so many that it led Daré to set up The Louding Voice Foundation in 2023, a life-changing organisation supporting young girls in having an education and protecting them from child labour and abuse.
Though she didn't just want to bring in the issues of the climate as it was a timely topic, she needed to find a worthy story. She didn't consider writing about it until she says "it became very, very clear to me that climate was the blood that bled through all the major issues affecting girls (in Nigeria)”.
"I wanted to talk about the major barriers girls have to education. When I began my research, I could not believe what a huge impact climate change has made in these regions of Nigeria where I envisioned the books’ fictional village of Ikati to be", where Adunni is from. And So I Roar finds Adunni just about to start school, which she is incredibly excited for after escaping child marriage in the previous novel. But, before she's able to go, she's made to return to her village.
In the novel, Daré says there’s been a lot of drought since Adunni left the village a year ago, which is based on facts from parts of Nigeria. “What I found quite interesting is that you find a period of drought followed very quickly by a period of terrible flooding," explains Daré. "I knew that both of these issues had to be brought forward".
There's a lot of superstition, and as women are the custodians of nature and seen as being more connected to it because of Mother Nature, they are the ones blamed
Adunni, along with other girls of the village, is blamed for this extreme weather, so she returns to clear her name and to educate people on the real reason behind the weather patterns. Yet, in reality, "the girls have made zero contribution to the climate changing," explains Daré.
During her research for the book, which spanned two years, Daré came across an NGO in Nigeria, who validated her concerns on how much the girls were suffering "and how climate change had greatly impacted their education, how it led to child marriage and child labour," she says. "Then, suddenly it just hit me that this was the story I needed to tell".
Issues within farming, such as crop failure and the drastic size reduction of produce were being blamed on the women. "There's a lot of superstition, and as women are the custodians of nature and seen as being more connected to it because of Mother Nature, they are the ones blamed," she explains.
On one of her research trips to Nigeria, Daré went to some rural areas and said "I saw the level of erosion happening and people that were having to move because of flooding”. She tells these true events through her characters, one of whom is an elderly woman who's going blind and dying who had to move to escape flooding.
Of course, spending so much time researching and writing on such a disastrous topic can take its toll too. "The book has some heavy themes and because I like to write through humor, I would do my research, wipe my tears, and go, 'Okay, how can we laugh about this?' That was a lot of the work, trying to find humour and hope in dark places,” she says.
Though for her, it was important that the story was not a lecture on the problems of the climate crisis. This is something the judges of the prize had praised Daré's writing for, as they were looking for a book that had woven climate themes throughout, without preaching or lecturing.
Stories are one of the most important ways people can connect and enter another person's world without leaving their own home
"I wanted people to feel it and to experience all the emotions that all the characters did, as opposed to me throwing it in your face, as there's a sense of apathy when you keep hammering at people's faces," she says.
The Climate Fiction Prize came to life to support the genre becoming known as cli-fi, and to change attitudes, provide hope and also encourage solutions to the crisis. Funded by the Climate Spring organisation, it's an important step in the creative writing world. One that Daré says "inspires change in ways that we could never imagine".
It's given a dedicated space for writers to cover this incredibly important topic. "It allows us to have a lot more courage," explains Daré. Adding that "stories are one of the most important ways people can connect and enter another person's world without leaving their own home".
Daré has come a long way since thinking her work couldn't make a dent in the climate crisis. Now, she says that "climate change is such a part of everything we do. It's here, it's happening and it's now. So let's write about the now".
