Peace Adzo Medie

Peace Adzo Medie is a Liberian-born Ghanaian academic and writer of both fiction and nonfiction.

Early life and education

Medie was born in Liberia and moved to Ghana as a child, where she studied at OLA Girls Senior High School. She received a bachelor's degree in geography from the University of Ghana. She then completed her postgraduate studies in the United States, where she obtained a Ph.D. in public and international affairs from the University of Pittsburgh. Medie has been awarded several including 2019 Best Article Award of the European Journal of Politics and Gender.

Before the war pushed her family to relocate, Medie spent her early years in Liberia, where they lost their comfortable way of life. While visiting family and friends in Ghana, she saw how the way these families lives differed according to their socioeconomic standing. She compared society expectations to a how well they perform, in which individuals follow rules set out by their social class, as a result of this experience.

Career

Academic career

Medie worked as a research fellow at the University of Ghana and a postdoctoral research fellow at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. She is now a senior lecturer in gender and international politics at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. Her work was awarded the 2012–2013 African Affairs African Author Prize.

Her scholarship focuses on gender, politics, and armed conflict.

In 2020, Medie published her first book, the scholarly work Global Norms and Location Action: The Campaigns to End Violence Against Women in Africa. It deals with post-conflict states' responses to violence against women.

She is on the editorial board of the journal Politics & Gender and co-edits the journal African Affairs. She co-edited African Affairs, the top-ranked African studies journal, and the Oxford Studies in African Politics and International Relations book series.

Medie discusses women's rights, feminism, politics, and violence against women at international panels held by the African Union and universities of the United Nations. She has done some field work in Liberia and Cote Di'ovoire and has spoken to survivors of violence. That wanted to leave abusive relationships but weren't able to. Because people encourage them to stay and people discourage them from leaving family and friends . So it got Medie thinking about the decisions women take in relationships because of the pressures and the advices that they receive around them.

Fiction writing

In addition to her academic work, Medie has produced several works of short fiction that focus on friendship and love in the lives of varying female characters. In 2020, she published her debut novel, His Only Wife. It deals with the struggles of modern marriage in Ghana and the interconnecting lives of three women, Afi, Evelyn, and Muna. It was described as "A Cinderella story set in Ghana" by Kirkus.

His Only Wife was well received, appearing on several lists of best new releases, including the New York Times' Staff Picks. In 2021, she was named "Best Author" by the Ghanaian news station Citi TV at its annual Entertainment Achievement Awards.

Her second novel, Nightbloom, which follows two cousins along divergent but parallel paths on both sides of the Atlantic, was released in 2023. The following year, it was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction.

Medie describes her fiction as being heavily influenced by her academic research into gender, violence, and politics.

Peace Adzo Medie's grasping novel Nightbloom explores the enduring relationships of female friendship in the face of cultural obstacles. The conflict, which is set in Ghana and the US, centers on cousins Selasi and Akorfa, who were once inseparable but are now split apart by Selasi's change and the challenges Akorfa encounters as an African woman living in the US. The book deftly addresses issues of class, family, and the strength of women against oppression as they deal with secrets and social pressures. A moving meditation on the enduring power of female ties in the face of misfortune may be found in Medie's elegant story. Nightbloom is about Medie's experiences that she observed in Ghana and how Selasi and Akorfa are affected by the dynamics of their family. How Selasi had lost her mother from an early age and had to become independent to struggler for her success. However, Akorfa being well-off had to look from validation from her parents for finding success.

Non-fiction writing

The global emphasis of Global Norms and Local Action is violence against women globally. It focuses on the struggles faced by women in the legal system to obtain justice. But the mental battle that women must win in order to achieve peace comes before they ever get justice. Because African women, in particular, believe that police cannot relate to their pain and cannot offer enough assistance, police personnel are unable to assist these women.

Selected works

• Medie, Peace A. (2020). Global Norms and Local Action: The Campaigns to End Violence Against Women in Africa. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-092296-2. (non-fiction)
• Medie, Peace Adzo (September 2020). His Only Wife. Algonquin Books. ISBN 978-1-64375-111-5. (fiction)
• Medie, Peace Adzo (2023). NightBloom.