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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“An excoriating critique”: Review of Leye Adenle’s ‘When Trouble Sleeps’
AiW Guest: Sam Naidu. Leye Adenle’s noir thriller, When Trouble Sleeps, is an excoriating critique of contemporary Nigerian society. From the prologue, with its melodramatic plane crash to the surprisingly satisfying conclusion, this novel is relentless in its examination of… Read More ›
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Gaël Faye in Conversation: A Review
AiW Guest: Akua Banful. I walked into the large room on the second floor of Albertine, the French consulate affiliated bookstore in New York, and immediately felt the energy and anticipation of the crowd. The old, the young, the francophone… Read More ›
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RadioBook Rwanda: Bringing Together Text, Sound & Audiences
AiW Guest Lucky Grace Isingizwe To me, RadioBook Rwanda reads and sounds like a documentation of the Rwandan way of living. When I engage with each of the stories, I can see them expanding from the author’s eyes and making… Read More ›
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Review: New Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set (Tano)
AiW Guest: Rashi Rohatgi. AiW note: This is the introduction to a series of poetry reviews on the New-Generation African Poets Chapbook Box Set from AiW Guest Rashi Rohatgi. Look for the follow-up reviews of the volumes in this box… Read More ›
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“Corridors of storytelling” in contemporary African culture: Small Magazines at Africa Writes – Sunday July 1st, 2018
AiW Guest: Sumayya Lee. AiW note: This is the fifth in a series of posts for Africa in Words exploring the networked series of research, events, and discussions, ‘Small Magazines, Literary Networks and Self-Fashioning in Africa and its Diasporas’. Here… Read More ›
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An African Literary Calendar: 15 Books on Our Radar Right Now
AiW Guest: Sana Goyal. Earlier this year saw the publication of first novels by Leila Slimani (Lullaby) and Novuyo Rosa Tshuma (House of Stone), Michael Donkor (Hold) and Peter Kimani (Dance of the Jakaranda). These books sat on bookshelves alongside… Read More ›
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Q&A: Temitayo Olofinlua on Book Distribution and Literary Activism
AiW Guest: Serah Kasembeli I had never crossed the border to the neighbouring Uganda, even though our home is very close to the Kenya-Uganda Busia border. The idea of crossing into what has always been there yet unexplored, resonated in many… Read More ›
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“An act of inspiration”: Review of La Bastarda by Trifonia Melibea Obono
AiW Guest: Karina M. Szczurek Trifonia Melibea Obono’s La Bastarda was first published two years ago in its original Spanish by Feminist Press and has now become the first novel by an Equatorial Guinean woman writer to be translated into… Read More ›
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Q&A: Serah Kasembeli on Reading Student Protests from YouTube
AiW Guest: Tadiwa Madenga A few years ago, I started to feel like I was learning everything I knew from YouTube. It was exciting to find a free archive with endless live recordings from concerts, artists’ interviews, hair tutorials, and… Read More ›
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Genre, Politics, and Southern Superheroes: Review of Bill Masuku’s Captain South Africa
AiW Guest: Dominic Davies. A little over two years ago I travelled to Cape Town to attend FanCon 2016, an event that was then South Africa’s most attended comics convention to date. As a researcher interested in graphic narratives from… Read More ›
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Q&A: Tinashe Mushakavanhu on Reading Zimbabwe from Kampala
AiW Guest: Tadiwa Madenga Before I travelled to Kampala, I found myself shockingly motivated to finish writing an academic paper. I had just moved from Boston to Brooklyn for the summer, and in that transition, a once tedious essay felt… Read More ›
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Conserving culture and pushing boundaries in Somaliland: Hargeysa International Book Fair 2018
AiW Guest: Caitlin Pearson, Africa Writes Go through the gates of the Xaranta Dhaqanka, the Hargeysa Cultural Centre in Somaliland’s capital, and you’ll encounter a courtyard of small buildings. To your right is the Cultural Centre’s library, housing a wide-ranging… Read More ›
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“Reading is a collective pursuit”: Open Book Festival Review
AiW Guest: Megan Ross. Before I write this review I’ll… Share my Open Book diet Too. Much. Caffeine. All the dry red at the Fugard bar. Half a bottle of single malt whiskey (and its accompanying hangover) that Helene Prinsloo… Read More ›
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African Superheroes in the 1970s and 1980s: A Postscript
AiW note: This is a followup to the second post in our series on African superheroes, guest edited by Tessa Pijnaker, PhD student in African Studies and Anthropology at the University of Birmingham. Look out for more in this AiW… Read More ›
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The African classroom: Reviewing Le Monde Afrique’s series « La classe africaine »
AiW Guest: Connor Pruss. From January to February 2018, Le Monde Afrique, the online African edition to the French newspaper Le Monde, released a series of articles chronicling education in various contexts across the continent called, “The African Classroom” (« La… Read More ›
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‘The archive of my life’: The UK pre-launch of Akwaeke Emezi’s autobiographical novel ‘Freshwater’ at Africa Writes 2018
AiW Guest: Sana Goyal. It’s the Saturday afternoon of the Africa Writes weekend in London — the 2018 edition. Sitting in the second row of the Auditorium at the British Library, I hear several excitable voices over my shoulder. And… Read More ›
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Defragmenting the African Creative Industry. African Superheroes Series.
AiW Guest Abena Addai Boakye The fourth post in the African Superheroes series is written by Abena Addai Boakye, Communications Manager and project lead for Afrocomix at Leti Arts. She handles the daily communicative aspects of Leti and runs point on… Read More ›
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A People-centred Approach to Literary Activism in 21st Century Africa: Nii Ayikwei Parkes on Arts Management and Literary Activism at Writivism 2017
AiW Guest Madhu Krishnan. AiW note: This week in the run up to the 2018 Writivism festival, the Arts Managers and Literary Activists Network (AMLA) hosted their third annual workshop bringing together early career academics and Africa-centered literary producers. It… Read More ›
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Building an Archive – Voices from the Panel “Loving Womxn: Deliberate and Afraid of Nothing” at the 2018 Africa Writes Festival
AiW Guest: Katarzyna Kubin. It was the second day of the Africa Writes Festival, a week ahead of Black Pride. The heatwave beat on in London whilst, in the British Library, the animated festival crowd buzzed and mingled to and… Read More ›
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Q&A: Akdogan Ali – Founder of game development studio Black Ring and developer of Throne of Gods, a Nigerian fighting game based on African mythology. In the African Superheroes series.
AiW Guest Tessa Pijnaker This third post in Africa in Words’ series about African superheroes is based on an interview with Akdogan Ali in April 2018. Ali (29) and his partner Umusu Samson Iruo (31) are the founders of the… Read More ›
