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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Caine Prize 2020: Tragedy and Trauma in a Roland Mouret Jacket: A Review of Grace Jones by Irenosen Okojie
AiW Note: AiW’s annual Caine Prize review series is back. We’ve been talking about prize culture for a long time at Africa in Words; Kate Wallis started off this series in 2013. Over the five Fridays in July, we are reviewing… Read More ›
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Conflicted writing: NGOs, African Literature and Autonomy. Review of Au-dessous du volcan
AiW Guest: Madeline Bedecarré Note de la rédaction: L’équipe d’Africa in Words est ravie de présenter aujourd’hui notre premier post en deux langues ! Pour la version en français de ce compte-rendu, cliquez ici. Part anthology, part conference proceedings, part… Read More ›
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L’écriture conflictuelle: les ONG, la littérature africaine et l’autonomie. Compte-rendu de Au-dessous du volcan
Auteure invitée: Madeline Bedecarré AiW note: We are thrilled to publish today our first dual-language review! For the English-language version of this post, click here. Mi recueil de nouvelles, mi actes du colloque, avec un parfum de manifeste littéraire, Au-dessous… Read More ›
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“I wish for my poems and music to do away with things I’m sure about. I wish for them to undo me, to unmake me”: Q&A with Petero Kalulé.
AiW Guest: Esther Mirembe. Petero Kalulé is a composer, poet, and multi-instrumentalist. Their music can be bought and listened to via Bandcamp, and their collection of poems Kalimba was published by Guillemot Press in May 2019 – you can buy… Read More ›
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A Box Full of Darkness: The Spaces of Trauma in Jumoke Verissimo’s “A Small Silence”
AiW Guest: James Yeku. AiW note: Anticipating this review, yesterday Jumoke Verissimo, author of A Small Silence (Cassava Republic), offered us her Words on the Times, a Q&A set that offers a space for connection in the experiences of the… Read More ›
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“A Thousand Tentative Tendrils”: Review of The Only Magic We Know: Selected Modjaji Poems 2004 to 2019
AiW Guest: Susanna Sacks. AiW note: This review is the fourth, and last, in a series of posts on the release of two anniversary collections from feminist indy press Modjaji Books – the short story anthology published last year, Fool’s Gold: Selected… Read More ›
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“But Words Grow Up and Reverberate” (Arja Salafranca): Review of “Fool’s Gold: Selected Short Stories” from Modjaji Books
AiW Guest: Susanna Sacks. AiW note: This review is the third in a series of posts on the release of two new anniversary collections from feminist press Modjaji Books – the short story anthology published last year, Fool’s Gold, and… Read More ›
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Q&A: “honoring the writers” – in conversation with Colleen Higgs, Modjaji Press
AiW Guest: Susanna Sacks. Two weeks ago, I caught up with Colleen Higgs, writer and publisher of the independent feminist press Modjaji Books, to discuss Modjaji’s history and her own publishing activism. Higgs founded Modjaji in 2007 to build space… Read More ›
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Love, Loss and Migrant Womanhood: A Review of “Better Never Than Late” by Chika Unigwe
AiW Guest: Zahra Banday. AiW note: We caught up with our Guest Reviewer, Zahra Banday, for some of her Words on the Times – an AiW series of Q&As, connecting artists, writers, thinkers and educators in our new experiences of… Read More ›
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Q&A with Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King: “No one stays static, so language should not be static.”
AiW Guests: Korranda Harris & Birhanu Gessese Maaza Mengiste is an Ethiopian-American writer who has published two novels: Beneath the Lion’s Gaze (2010) and The Shadow King (2019). Mengiste’s fiction paints engaging portraits of life and engages with the themes… Read More ›
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Review: Yolande Mukagasana’s ‘Not My Time to Die’
AiW Guests: Inês Martinho Ferreira and Kiera Fields Kwibuka means ‘to remember’ and describes the annual commemoration of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Last year, as part of Kwibuka 25, Rwandan publisher Huza Press published Yolande Mukagasana’s… Read More ›
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Q&A with writer Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi: On Writing Place
AiW Guests: Brittany Willis and Catrin Williams Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi is a Ugandan writer currently living in Manchester. Her first novel, Kintu, won the Kwani 2013 Manuscript Project and was longlisted for the Etisalat Prize in 2014. Her most recent… Read More ›
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Review: What Diaspora Means Now – Nuruddin Farah’s ‘North of Dawn’
AiW Guest: Rashi Rohatgi. AiW note: We caught up with novelist, poet, and professor of World Literature – our guest author and reviewer here, Rashi Rohatgi – to ask for some of her Words on the times – an AiW… Read More ›
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Q&A with Angela Wachuka – Literary producer and co-founder of Book Bunk
AiW Guests: Jess Irving and Jessica Smith Angela Wachuka is one of Kenya’s leading literary producers. In 2018, with Wanjiru Koinange, she founded Book Bunk. From 2008 to 2017, Wachuka was Executive Director of Kwani Trust, where she published Africa’s… Read More ›
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Q&A with writer Olumide Popoola: “If we can’t imagine anything different, we can never strive for change”
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 ›
