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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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 ›
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Review: New Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set (Tano Part 4, Memory)
AiW Guest: Rashi Rohatgi AiW note: This is the fifth 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… Read More ›
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‘Reality the stranger fiction’: Review of Namwali Serpell’s ‘The Old Drift’
AiW Guest: Charlott Schönwetter Zzz Zzzz. At the beginning and – as much shall be revealed – at the end, a swarm of mosquitoes speaks: “This is the story of a nation – not a kingdom or a people –… Read More ›
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‘Every time we have an opportunity to view other people or other places, it adds value to our own lives’: Talking inclusion, community and joy with ‘Rafiki’ filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu
AiW Guests: Ben Apea, Aysha Taylor & Molly West Wanuri Kahiu is a Kenyan author, film director and producer, who has been making films since 2009. Her films From a Whisper, Pumzi, For Our Land and Rafiki engage with a… Read More ›
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Q&A: “My poetry feeds imagination to memory.” Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike interviews D.M. Aderibigbe
AiW Guest: Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike D.M. Aderibigbe‘s first book, How the End First Showed won the 2018 Brittingham Prize in Poetry and is published by the University of Wisconsin Press, November 2018. His poems have appeared in The Nation, Poetry Review, Callaloo, jubilat,… Read More ›
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Q&A: “Poetry as a vehicle for telling stories and interrogating memory.”Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike interviews Kólá Túbòsún
AiW Guest: Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike Kọlá Túbọsún is a Nigerian linguist and writer based in Lagos, Nigeria. He is a joint winner of the Saraba Magazine Manuscript Contest in 2017 and the winner of the 2018 Miles Morland Scholarship. He… Read More ›
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Review: Terry Kurgan’s “Everyone is Present”
AiW Guest: Andrew van der Vlies Terry Kurgan is one of South Africa’s most accomplished and sophisticated theorists of her own photographic practice. Her projects, both studio-based and publicly engaged, have frequently explored the mediations of power relations at play… Read More ›
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Review: Oyeyemi’s ‘Gingerbread’ has “no nostalgia baked in”
AiW Guest: Caitlin Bridget Shewell-Cooper. My friends have long heard my complaints that Helen Oyeyemi’s UK covers have never done the books justice. Too twee, too generic, chill out, Caitlin. The Riverhead Books US edition of Gingerbread, featuring a dark… Read More ›
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Review: New Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set (Tano Part 3, Politics)
AiW Guest: Rashi Rohatgi AiW note: This is the fourth 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… Read More ›
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Call for Papers: MLA 2020, African Literature to 1990 (deadline Mar. 15)
The Modern Language Association Forum for African Literature to 1990 is seeking papers for the following panels proposed for MLA 2020 (9-12 January) in Seattle, Washington: African Literature and the Cold War How does the global Cold War transform readings… Read More ›
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Review: New Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set (Tano Part 2, Heartache)
AiW Guest: Rashi Rohatgi AiW note: This is the third in a series of poetry reviews on the New-Generation African Poets Chapbook Box Set from AiW Guest Rashi Rohatgi. You can find the previous posts here and here; look for… Read More ›
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Isaac Fadoyebo: soldier and storyteller between Nigeria and Burma
AiW Guest: Oliver Coates Isaac Fadoyebo’s memoir A Stroke of Unbelievable Luck offers a unique record of one African soldier’s war service in India and Burma. Forced to hide behind enemy lines in the Burmese rainforest for nine months, Fadoyebo’s… Read More ›
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‘Archive, snapshot, treasure trove’: Review of ‘Voices of Ghana’
AiW Guest: Madhu Krishnan It’s difficult to know where to start with a text like Voices of Ghana: Literary Contributions to the Ghana Broadcasting System 1955-57. Edited by Victoria Ellen Smith, the second edition of this collection of plays, prose… Read More ›
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Talking #Africadia and Afropolitanism: An Interview with Artist Siwa Mgoboza
AiW Guest: Stacey Kennedy Siwa Mgboza is an emerging artistic talent from South Africa working primarily with a South African textile called isiShweshwe. He is represented by Loft Art Gallery in Casablanca, Morocco, Matter Gallery in Toronto, Canada, BoxArt Gallery… Read More ›
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Review: New Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set (Tano Part 1, Diaspora)
AiW Guest: Rashi Rohatgi. AiW note: This is the second in a series of poetry reviews on the New-Generation African Poets Chapbook Box Set from AiW Guest Rashi Rohatgi. You can find the introductory post here; look for the follow-up reviews of the… Read More ›
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Literary Networks and Collaborations: A Nod towards Knowledge Decolonisation
AiW Guest: Doseline Kiguru. AiW note: This is part of 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 our… Read More ›
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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 ›
