Author Archives
A series of Guest Author posts that open our conversations.
For more info, bios and links about each of our AiW Guests, scroll to the foot of their individual posts.
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“If we can’t imagine anything different, we can never strive for change”: Q&A with writer Olumide Popoola
AiW note: This conversation follows on from our cast back to last March (2019) and Chelsea Haith’s review of the Q&A’s main text, Popoola’s 2017 novel, When We Speak of Nothing: ‘Experimental…Representative and Complex’ – #PastAndPresent . AiW Guests: René… Read More ›
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“Heroes and scholars are everywhere”: Q&A with Abu Amirah, founder of Hekaya
AiW Guest Aurélie Journo Author’s note: I met Abu Amirah when I attended the first Swahili Litfest he organised in March 2019 in Mombasa. After an exciting day of performances by high school students from selected schools Mombasa county in… Read More ›
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Responding to Carli Coetzee’s “Unsettling the Air-conditioned Room”: “Laboratory Building” and Africa-based and focused Literary Activism (2/2)
AiW Guest Bwesigye bwa Mwesigire AiW note: Africa in Words has long been engaged with the work of Carli Coetzee, and we particularly admire the care that she takes in thinking through the nature of our work as academics and… Read More ›
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Review – The Smouldering Fires of Aké Arts & Book Festival 2019
AiW Guest: Temitayo Olofinlua Earlier in the year, I watched The Hate U Give and If Beale Street Could Talk and, through these films, saw how the American justice system hurls itself against black bodies until it is bent out… Read More ›
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Responding to Carli Coetzee’s ‘Unsettling the Air-conditioned Room’: Journal Work as Ethos (1/2)
AiW Guest Rotimi Fasan AiW note: Africa in Words has long been engaged with the work of Carli Coetzee, and we particularly admire the care that she takes in thinking through the nature of our work as academics and the… Read More ›
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Review – Against conventions: on Femi Morgan’s Renegade (2019)
AiW Guest: Tọ́pẹ́ Salaudeen-Adégòkè. Sometimes, impositions on our spaces and feelings – in the form of law, tradition or custom – try to curtail our inclinations and stifle our freedom of expression. In some nations subject to despotic regimes, restrictions are… Read More ›
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Q&A: Zaahida Nabagereka on Afrikult. & widening access to African literatures
AiW Guest: Abbi Bayliss Zaahida Nabagereka recently completed work on her doctoral thesis at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (SOAS) focusing on the politics of language and its impact on literature production in Uganda. Based… Read More ›
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Words on Teaching: ‘Creative Thinking, Bold Idea-ing, Do-it-yourselfing’: Literature and Education in Binyavanga Wainaina’s Works
AiW Guest: Ruth S. Wenske. AiW note: Welcome to the first in our new “Words on…” series. In “Words on Teaching,” we’re thinking around print culture – books, images, texts, mags, spaces – and broad senses of what “teaching” might… Read More ›
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Westdene Graffiti Project
AiW Guest: Ofentse Mashego In July 2015, the Johannesburg suburb of Westdene launched its own community mural project. The first of its kind in South Africa, and possibly globally, the Westdene Graffiti Project uses the art of graffiti to personalise… Read More ›
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In the Dark: Review of Jumoke Verissimo’s ‘A Small Silence’
AiW Guest: Temitayo Olofinlua Prof, a pro-democracy activist, has just returned from prison after years of incarceration. And now he chooses to sit in darkness. Whenever he goes out, he is shrouded from head to toe in a dark cloak…. Read More ›
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Q&A: ‘The goal is to be free, not white’: an interview with Seun Kuti
AiW Guest Tọ́pẹ́ Salaudeen-Adégòkè Oluseun Anikulapo Kuti (born 11 January 1983), commonly known as Seun Kuti, is a Nigerian musician and the youngest son of legendary late afrobeat pioneer, Fela Kuti. Seun and his brother, Femi, are the two commercially… Read More ›
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A Tragic Story of War: Discussing Aminatta Forna’s The Memory of Love at the BBC Bookclub
AiW Guest Zahra Banday Zahra Banday attended a recent recording of BBC Radio 4’s Bookclub discussing Aminatta Forna’s novel The Memory of Love (2011). The BBC Bookclub programme aired on 1st September 2019; you can listen again here, or catch… Read More ›
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Of Odyssean Saga and Romantic Tragedy – a review of Chigozie Obioma’s An Orchestra of Minorities
AiW Guest Tọ́pẹ́ Salaudeen-Adégòkè ‘You paid me evil for all I did for you…’ –An Orchestra of Minorities. ‘If the luminous intensity of Good did not give the night of Evil its blackness, Evil would lose its appeal.’ –Literature and… Read More ›
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Caine Prize 2019 Shortlist: A Review of Lesley Nneka Arimah’s “Skinned”
AiW Guest: Tolulope Akinwole AiW’s annual Caine Prize review series is back, adding to our conversations over the years about prizes and prize culture – see Kate Wallis’ kick off from back in 2013. In the coming days we are… Read More ›
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Caine Prize 2019 Shortlist: A Review of Cherrie Kandie’s “Sew My Mouth”
AiW Guest: Temitayo Olofinlua This is the third in AiW’s annual Caine Prize for African Writing review series, reviewing all five of the shortlisted stories of 2019’s offerings. We’ve long used the opportunity to talk through the writing recognised by… Read More ›
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Q&A: Margaret Busby on ‘New Daughters of Africa’
AiW Guests: Ellen Mitchell and Sophie Kulik Margaret Busby (OBE) is a Ghanaian born editor, publisher, writer and broadcaster based in London, and has been described as the “Doyenne of Black British Publishing”. Busby was Britain’s youngest and first black… Read More ›
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Q&A: The ‘Self-Confessed Rambler’: In Conversation with TJ Dema
AiW Guests: Dani Payne and Isobel Clark TJ Dema is a poet and arts administrator, currently living in Bristol. As a spoken word poet, she reads her poetry all over the world. In 2018, she won the Sillerman Prize for… Read More ›
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Review: New Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set (Tano Part 5, Juxtapositions)
AiW Guest: Rashi Rohatgi AiW note: This is the last in a series of poetry reviews on the New-Generation African Poets Chapbook Box Set from AiW Guest Rashi Rohatgi. You can find the introduction to this series here, and reviews of the… Read More ›
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Living to not please the aesthetic of the colonized eye: Zanele Muholi’s “Somnyama Ngonyama”
AiW Guest: Bulelwa Mbele Somnyama Ngonyama: Hail the Dark Lioness is the latest release by the South African photographer and visual activist Zanele Muholi. Previously breaking ground with solo exhibitions including Only Half the Picture (2006, Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town),… Read More ›
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Q&A: Peter Kimani, author of Dance of the Jakaranda, talks with Maëline Le Lay
AiW Guest: Maëline Le Lay Peter Kimani is an award-winning author. He was 1 of 3 poets commissioned to compose and present a poem marking Obama’s 2009 inauguration. Born in 1971 in Kenya, he has won the Jomo Kenyatta Prize… Read More ›
