Maame Blue is a Ghanaian-Londoner, part-time Melbourne resident, and author of the novel Bad Love (Jacaranda Books), named as one of the top 3 debuts of 2020 by Cheltenham Literature Festival. She is the winner of the 2021 Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Betty Trask Prize. Maame is also a recipient of the 2022 Society of Authors Travelling Scholarship, an Arts Council England 2022 Develop Your Creative Practice grant, and was a 2022 POCC Artist-in-Residence. Her short stories have appeared in Not Quite Right For Us (Flipped Eye Publishing), New Australian Fiction 2020 (Kill Your Darlings), and Joyful, Joyful (Pan Macmillan). Maame's writing has appeared in multiple media publications, including Refinery29, The Independent and iNews.
A powerful, thoughtful novel about memory and how the past shapes the future * Red Magazine (Best Books of October) * A beautiful, compelling exploration of familial bonds, trauma and the secrets of the past. Maame Blue's tender, emotionally rich portrait of diasporic Black lives is a novel to return to. Highly recommended -- Irenosen Okojie, author of Hag Maame Blue places vulnerability and emotional truth at the heart of this novel, interwoven between place, time and character. A sober meditation of how an individual's present is shaped by their collective past, The Rest is You is surprising and tender, precise and free-ranging. A novel of layers, heartfelt meaning, and revelation -- Courttia Newland, author of A River Called Time A novel that doesn't shy away from the modern issues of being Black and female. At times heartbreaking, this portrait of a family coming to terms with a tragic past is vivid and tender Shuttling between Kumasi, Ghana and London, England, as well as between past and present, The Rest of You is a story of friendship, loss, trauma and hope, that explores multi-generational pain and the secrets and silences that families can fall into in a bid to move forward. The Rest of You is a quintessential immigrant story with a particular Black British twist, with its characters sometimes misremembering their roots, but shaped by them, their journey to completeness dependent on learning and accepting that history is their foundation, hybridity is their power and togetherness is their strength -- Nii Ayikwei Parkes, author of AzĂșcar