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.

• The Way We Lived – A Review of Chinua Achebe’s ‘There Was a Country’

  By Africa in Words Guest on 28 May , 2015 • ( 6 )

  

  AiW Guest: Pelu Awofeso After the dust raised in Nigeria by its publication had settled, I finally read There Was a Country, Chinua Achebe’s last published book, which centres on the Nigeria-Biafra civil war and Achebe’s personal experiences of and participation… Read More ›

• Saah Millimono’s ‘Boy, Interrupted’: The Love Story from Liberia

  By Africa in Words Guest on 27 May , 2015 • ( 3 )

  

  AiW Guest Bwesigye bwa Mwesigire Today, I want to tell you a story. It is not my story. It is Saah Millimono’s story. Maybe it is actually not his story, it is the novel’s protagonist Tarnue’s story. And not just… Read More ›

• The South African State of Emergency

  By Africa in Words Guest on 14 May , 2015 • ( 0 )

  

  AiW Guest: Jeanne-Marie Jackson South Africa’s literary world, as part of the country’s broad current turmoil, offers evidence for more than just a shallow reading of cultural déjà vu. This evidence goes by the name of Salman Rushdie, who unexpectedly… Read More ›

• “What’s Happening Over There?”: World Literature from the Global South – Man Booker International Public Panel, 26.03.2015

  By Africa in Words Guest on 17 April , 2015 • ( 1 )

  

  AiW Guest: Sarah Middleton. It has become hard to imagine living in a place where there’s a constant supply of electricity. In Cape Town we experience load-shedding, like the rest of the country, as a measure to prevent the collapse… Read More ›

• Zanele Muholi & Lerato Dumse at the University of Brighton (12/03/15)

  By Africa in Words Guest on 10 April , 2015 • ( 3 )

  

  AiW Guest: Tessa Lewin.  On 12th March 2015 the University of Brighton was visited by two extraordinary South Africans – Zanele Muholi and Lerato Dumse. They were talking about queer black visual activism in South Africa, 21 years after the advent… Read More ›

• Review: Stellenbosch Dirt Colloquium, March 2015

  By Africa in Words Guest on 2 April , 2015 • ( 1 )

  

  AiW Guest: Eckard Smuts. Now, almost two weeks after the event, as I try to assemble a tidy picture of the sway and flow of our numerous discussions, an image comes back to me: a horn, black, from the mouth… Read More ›

• A brief introduction to South African house music

  By Africa in Words Guest on 2 March , 2015 • ( 3 )

  

  AiW guest: Tom Simmert In the end it’s all DJ Lunga’s fault. Without the feature about him and his label Baainar Records in the German magazine BEAT, I’d never (or at least much later) have thought about South African House… Read More ›

• Africa Travels, Africa Writes.  Notes on African Intellectual Mobilities.  

  By Africa in Words Guest on 26 February , 2015 • ( 2 )

  

  AiW guests: Janet Remmington and Nicklas Hållén Typically Africa has been framed as a destination, not source, of travellers. Also it has been taken to be the subject, not origin, of texts. Travel and movement of Africans are too often… Read More ›

• Review – Jacob Dlamini’s Askari: A Story of Collaboration and Betrayal

  By Africa in Words Guest on 12 February , 2015 • ( 0 )

  

  AiW Guest: James Smith. On Jacob Dlamini’s Askari: A story of collaboration and betrayal in the anti-apartheid struggle (Jacana Media, 2014). To many the mere notion of an askari challenges. In the South African context it denotes someone who does… Read More ›

• The Literature Gap in African Legal Academia

  By Africa in Words Guest on 9 February , 2015 • ( 2 )

  

  AiW Guest Bwesigye bwa Mwesigire Writing for Africa in Words in May 2014, Dustin Zacks presented a case for the inclusion of African Literature in American legal academia. The case for the inclusion of African literature, or any other literature… Read More ›

• ‘This is literary achievement; where is yours?’ Radio Ghana’s ‘The Singing Net’ 60 years on

  By Africa in Words Guest on 28 January , 2015 • ( 4 )

  

  Africa in Words Guest Victoria Smith: On 28th January 1955 the Ghanaian song Yaa Nom Montie played for the first time on radio as the theme music of the country’s first literary programme, Singing Net. The song’s composer, J.H. Kwabena… Read More ›

• Words on Teaching – “The Great War in Africa”

  By Africa in Words Guest on 26 January , 2015 • ( 1 )

  

  Africa in Words Guest Anne Samson: Ready packaged resources for those who want to explore the Great War in Africa are scarce. However, that shouldn’t put teachers and other educators off doing so as the amount of useful material on… Read More ›

• What Are Publishers Looking For in Fiction?: Report from Ake Festival, November 2014

  By Africa in Words Guest on 12 December , 2014 • ( 3 )

  

  AiW Guest Emma Shercliff The theme of the second Ake Festival, which took place from 18-22 November 2014 in Abeokuta, Nigeria, was ‘Bridges and Pathways’. Festival Director Lola Shoneyin had emphasized that the focus this year would be ‘on building… Read More ›

• Review: Transition Magazine’s Special Issue on Nelson Mandela (116)

  By Africa in Words Guest on 10 December , 2014 • ( 0 )

  

  AiW Guest Kristen Roupenian A surprising number of essays in Transition’s special issue on Nelson Mandela share the same basic argument: in the ongoing transformation of Mandela into a global icon, something important is being lost. Therefore, those who wish… Read More ›

• Q&A: Felwine Sarr – Writer, musician and co-founder of Jimsaan publishing house (Dakar, Senegal)

  By Africa in Words Guest on 8 December , 2014 • ( 1 )

  

  Interview and translation by AiW Guest Ruth Bush Felwine Sarr co-founded Editions Jimsaan in 2012. His co-founders are Boubacar Boris Diop and Nafissatou Dia Diouf, both leading figures in the Senegalese cultural scene. Alongside Jimsaan, which seeks to showcase new writing… Read More ›

• Literary Studies at the African Studies Association 2014: Review

  By Africa in Words Guest on 3 December , 2014 • ( 1 )

  

  AiW Guest Nathan Suhr-Sytsma The 57th annual meeting of the African Studies Association took place in Indianapolis over the weekend of 20-23rd November, under the theme ‘Rethinking Violence, Reconstruction and Reconciliation’. A large interdisciplinary conference with more than two thousand… Read More ›

• Abderrahmane Sissako’s ‘Timbuktu’ (2014): Film Africa, Review

  By Africa in Words Guest on 15 November , 2014 • ( 4 )

  

  AiW Guest Sarah Jilani Returning to London for its fourth year, the Royal African Society’s Film Africa 2014 festival brought a wealth of diverse voices from Africa and beyond in a celebration of past and present filmmaking from the continent…. Read More ›

• Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s ‘Kintu’ Made Me Want to Tell Our Stories

  By Africa in Words Guest on 12 November , 2014 • ( 9 )

  

  AiW Guest Nyana Kakoma When upcoming writers like me hear that Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi started writing Kintu in 2003, we despair. We reach into that part of our brain that always doubts that we will make it at this writing… Read More ›

• Between Imagination and Madness: Matière grise (2011) – review

  By Africa in Words Guest on 11 November , 2014 • ( 1 )

  

  AiW Guest Catherine Gilbert Matière grise (Grey Matter), 2011.  Directed by Kivu Ruhorahoza. 110 min. Kinyarwanda and French with English subtitles. 2014 marks the twentieth anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda in which as many as one million people were… Read More ›

• Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s ‘Weep Not, Child’ – 50 Years On

  By Africa in Words Guest on 10 November , 2014 • ( 2 )

  

  AiW Guest Sarah Jilani This year marks the 50th anniversary of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s  Weep Not, Child.  When the novel was originally published in 1964 by Heinemann’s African Writers Series, its author James Ngugi was a young Kenyan student at… Read More ›