With AiW Guests: Dolla Sapeta and Khaya Gqomo. A few weeks ago, Africa in Words published the first of our pioneering posts promoting the work of the New Brighton Art School. We sat down with Dolla Sapeta, its founder, to… Read More ›
Catching up on our monthly round-up of ‘other words’ – news on AiW’s radar, collated from across our Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. April’s most read Reviews and General posts one from #Present | & one from our archives – #Past (click… Read More ›
AiW Guests: Fisayo Amodu, Dora Houghton & Bryony Gooch. Romeo Oriogun is an award-winning poet from Nigeria. His previous work includes the chapbooks Burnt Men, The Origin of Butterflies and Museum of Silence. He was also awarded the 2017 Brunel… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Kadiatou Keita. It was exhilarating at first. I cheered Professor Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o on like he was performing. The March 2021 installment of the University of Yale’s English Department organised ‘African Writers in Conversation Series‘ featured Ngũgĩ wa… Read More ›
AiW Guests: Yasmine Arasteh, Skye Frewin & Sally Wright. Abubakar Adam Ibrahim is a prominent Nigerian writer and journalist. He is the author of the short story collection The Whispering Trees (2012), the novel Season of Crimson Blossoms (2015), and… Read More ›
AiW note: Following Lizzy Attree’s Words on the Times, in which she spoke about teaching and fundraising during a pandemic; Dami Ajayi’s responses to the same Q&A, in which he discussed his experiences of working as a doctor and writer… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Nduka Otiono, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada AiW note: Yesterday we celebrated the African release of Wreaths for a Wayfarer (Narrative Landscape Press), published in honour of writer, academic, and esteemed beloved mentor and Nigerian public intellectual, Pius Adesanmi, who lost… Read More ›
AiW Guests: Nduka Otiono and Uche Peter Umezurike. AiW note: by way of introduction to our Guest post here, we are very pleased to be able to share with the editors news of the African release of Wreaths for a… Read More ›
This month marks one year since we began our wrap ups of African literary and cultural news! Since then, we have moved to monthly wraps and as we move through the changed circumstances, timelines and spaces of now, we catch… Read More ›
AiW Guests: Isobella Norman, Leyla Mohammed and Leoni Fretwell. Wanjeri Gakuru is a freelance journalist, essayist and filmmaker invested in gender equality and social justice. From 2018, Wanjeri has been the Managing Editor of Jalada Africa, a Pan-African writers’ collective… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Florian Stadtler.
German colonial history remains little explored in fiction. Since the 1880s, Kaiser Wilhelm II, grandson of Queen Victoria, had the ambition to secure what was then termed Germany’s ‘Platz and der Sonne’, its place in the sun, Von Bülow’s infamous phrase in praise of Germany’s expansionist colonial policies. In popular historical discourse of German colonialism, attention tends to focus more on Deutsch-Südwestafrika…
By AiW Guest: Judyannet Muchiri.
[…]
Judyannet Muchiri: This is a heavy story and yet there are moments of stillness, joy, love, and tenderness, if you will. I wonder how it is for you as a writer to capture this human existence in its totality as you have done in Afterlives.
Abdulrazak Gurnah: My interest was not to write about the war or the ugliness of colonialism. Instead I want to make sure the context in which war and colonialism happened is understood. And that the people in that context were people with entire existences. I want to show how people who are wounded by the war and by life itself cope in these circumstances. Using the unexpected kindnesses in the story, I wanted to show that there is potential for kindness in people and sometimes circumstances can draw such kindness from us.
By AiW Guest: Judyannet Muchiri.
In the wake of a bad dream, one of the protagonists in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Afterlives, Hamza, laments: “such noise and screams and blood”. These words keep resounding when one thinks about the disruption caused by colonialism in Africa – how our grandparents and ancestors must have felt with the arrival of those who set themselves up as colonial masters.
AiW Guest: Tọ́pẹ́-ẸniỌbańkẹ́ Adégòkè. Iquo DianaAbasi’s debut collection of short stories, Efo Riro (Parresia 2020), puts meat on the bones of the observation that the sense of taste is somehow wired to things that we find delightful or repulsive. Consider psychiatry where… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Tọ́pẹ́-ẸniỌbańkẹ́ Adégòkè. AiW note: Femi Kayode grew up in Lagos, Nigeria. He studied Clinical Psychology at the University of Ibadan and has worked in advertising over the last two decades. He was a Packard Fellow in Film and… Read More ›
The written word envelops online as South African, African and International writers meet for a thought-provoking week of literary dialogue, exchanging ideas, and stimulating discussions. Time of the Writer features a diverse gathering of leading novelists, social commentators, activists, playwrights, short… Read More ›
AiW Guests: Lottie McGrath, Charlie Renwick, Eloise Percy-Davis and Tilly Everard. Nii Ayikwei Parkes is an acclaimed British-Ghanaian poet, writer, and publisher. Winner of multiple international awards, Parkes’ work ranges from the reinvention of accounts of slavery with sci-fi undertones… Read More ›
AiW Guests: Trang Vu, Hannah Judge & Naomi Osborne. Ayesha Harruna Attah is a Senegal-based Ghanaian writer. She is the author of Harmattan Rain, Saturday’s Shadows and The Hundred Wells of Salaga and has recently published a young adult novel,… Read More ›
We are pleased to share the news from Modjaji Books that a new edition (the fifth) of the African Small Publishers’ Catalogue is in production and will be available in July 2021. There’s still time and space to list in… Read More ›
AiW note: Last year, Africa in Words published a fascinating Words on the Times feature with the South African artist and poet, Dolla Sapeta. During his responses Dolla spoke of his vision of “bringing to life an art school in… Read More ›
