Author Archives

Stephanie Bosch Santana is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at UCLA. Her work focuses on southern African literary networks and the migration/transformation of genres in the region. Stephanie lived and worked in southern Africa from 2005-2008 and is the assistant editor of 'The Face of the Spirit: illuminating a century of essays by South African women' (2007) and co-editor of 'Winning Stories from the Malawian Girls’ Short Story Competition' (2009).

• Q&A with Thulani Lupondwana on her Facebook Fiction, ‘Diary of a Cheating Husband’

  By Stephanie Santana on 30 March , 2017 • ( 1 )

  

  At 23 years of age, Thulani Lupondwana is one of the few Facebook diary writers from South Africa who has continued to capture readers’ interest and “likes.” Following the enormous success of Mike Maphoto’s Diary of a Zulu Girl in… Read More ›

• The Future of Knowledge Production: Wikithon to Improve the ‘African Literature’ Wikipedia Page

  By Stephanie Santana on 19 May , 2015 • ( 2 )

  

  On June 4 at the upcoming African Literature Association (ALA) conference at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, Africa in Words will be hosting a ‘Wikithon’ to improve the ‘African Literature’ Wikipedia page. During a Wikithon (also often called an ‘Edit-a-thon‘), people… Read More ›

• Q&A with Muthi Nhlema: Time Travel, Nelson Mandela, and Digital Publishing

  By Stephanie Santana on 13 April , 2015 • ( 1 )

  

  Malawian writer Muthi Nhlema’s story “Ta O’Reva,” about a time-traveling Nelson Mandela, is competing in a “Long-Short Story Contest” held by online publisher Freeditorial. The contest, which will conclude on July 4, 2015, will be decided by the highest number… Read More ›

• Review: ‘Africa39’ – The Anthology and the Reader

  By Stephanie Santana on 6 January , 2015 • ( 1 )

  

  In her Editor’s Note to the recently published Africa39 anthology, Ellah Allfrey asserts, “There is no danger of ‘a single story’ here.” She is referencing, of course, Chimamanda Adichie’s TED Talk, in which Adichie argues that a singular narrative about any… Read More ›

• The Story Club: Malawi’s Newest Literary Initiative Goes Off-line

  By Stephanie Santana on 17 July , 2014 • ( 2 )

  

    Today, more and more literary events happen online. Readers argue over the plotlines of serialized ‘Facebook fiction.’ Writers tweet entire novels. And a Google Hangout with an author will draw a larger crowd than a signing at a local bookstore…. Read More ›

• Sarah Lotz on Her New Global Thriller, ‘The Three’

  By Stephanie Santana on 10 June , 2014 • ( 2 )

  

  Walking into Vroman’s—an independent bookstore in Pasadena, California, a place I’ve been coming since I was a kid—I was shocked to see Sarah Lotz’s name written neatly in red marker on the whiteboard announcing author talks. I’d just come back… Read More ›

• Reviews: The Year Ahead in African Fiction

  By Stephanie Santana on 25 February , 2014 • ( 2 )

  

  In my current capacity as Reviews Editor, I’d like to highlight in this post some of the new fiction that Africa in Words hopes to engage with in the coming months. While this list is by no means exhaustive and… Read More ›

• Q&A with ‘Diary of a Zulu Girl’ author Mike Maphoto

  By Stephanie Santana on 16 September , 2013 • ( 23 )

  

  Mike Maphoto’s ‘Diary of a Zulu Girl’ blog is something of a digital literature phenomenon. Since it began a scant five months ago in April 2013, it has had more than 10 million page views from 22 countries, spawned numerous… Read More ›

• From the ‘African Booker’ to ‘The Booker’: NoViolet Bulawayo’s ‘We Need New Names’

  By Stephanie Santana on 12 August , 2013 • ( 1 )

  

  NoViolet Bulawayo’s debut novel We Need New Names ends its first and last chapters with the same sensory detail: the alternately ‘dizzying’ and ‘delicious’ smell of Lobels bread. It is a smell that wafts through otherwise macabre scenes. In the first, a woman… Read More ›

• Exorcizing Afropolitanism: Binyavanga Wainaina explains why “I am a Pan-Africanist, not an Afropolitan” at ASAUK 2012

  By Stephanie Santana on 8 February , 2013 • ( 53 )

  

  AiW Guest Stephanie Bosch Santana. Traces of Binyavanga Wainaina’s address, “I am a Pan-Africanist, not an Afropolitan”, delivered at September’s African Studies Association UK 2012 conference, have lingered with me over the past few months: the image of invisible digital networks of… Read More ›

• Genre and the New Geographies of World Literature: A look at Jungle Jim’s “South African Sci-Fi” issue

  By Stephanie Santana on 7 December , 2012 • ( 3 )

  

  AiW Guest Stephanie Bosch Santana.  The cover of Jungle Jim issue no. 16, the magazine’s “South African Sci-fi” edition, depicts Zulu warriors casting tiny, toothpick-like spears at the Goliath of an alien bearing down on them. Styled after the pulp magazines… Read More ›