AiW Guest: Ademola Adesola. Lola Akande’s latest novel, The Truth about Sadia (Tunmike Publishers, 2023), follows Sadia Onaolapo Oyelowo’s journey from childhood to adulthood. Set in a recognizable Lagos, Nigeria, so crucial is Sadia to the novel that every “truth”… Read More ›
Research, Studies, Teaching
Reviews: ‘Everyday life’ — Karin Barber’s A History of African Popular Culture (2018)
AiW Guest: Elizabeth Olayiwola. AiW note: This is one of two linked reviews of Emeritus Professor of African Cultural Anthropology at the University of Birmingham, Karin Barber’s latest book, A History of African Popular Culture (2018, Cambridge UP), with our thanks… Read More ›
Q&A: Eyob Derillo– Literatures of the Horn of Africa, a conversation series
AiW Guests Interviewers: Jiali Chen, Josephine Stanton, George Ackerley, Natalia Bielecka Interviewee: Eyob Derillo Interview date: 12 January 2022. AiW note: This is one in a series of interviews carried out by undergraduate students as part of the module “Ethiopian,… Read More ›
Q&A: Professor Ghirmai Negash – Literatures of the Horn of Africa, a conversation series
AiW Guests Interviewers: Mollie McGing, Julia Karpinska, Abolaji Oshun, Alsadiq Suliman Interviewee: Ghirmai Negash Interview Date: 14th December 2021. AiW note: This is one in a series of interviews carried out by undergraduate students as part of the module “Ethiopian,… Read More ›
Refocusing Le Retour: Three Franco-Senegalese Works
AiW Guest: Sebastian Boivin. In an increasingly dynamic and interconnected geopolitical and socioeconomic landscape, so many of us think about the journey of migrants; fewer about their return. Work regarding the topic, including in francophone text from Africa, has focused… Read More ›
Q&A: George Norman Sylvester – Ananse comics, Captain Pepsodent and African superheroes in 1990s Ghana
AiW Guest: Tessa Pijnaker. This post forms part of an Africa in Words’ series on African superheroes, guest edited by Tessa Pijnaker, PhD student in African Studies and Anthropology at the University of Birmingham. This sixth post in the series… Read More ›
Q&A: On the NLNG Prize for Literary Criticism – Tọ́pẹ́-ẸniỌbańkẹ́ Adégòkè talks with 2020/21 prize winner, Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike
AiW Guests: Tọ́pẹ́-ẸniỌbańkẹ́ Adégòkè and NLNG Prize for Literary Criticism winner 2020/2021, Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike. AiW note: We are very pleased to be able to share this conversation between writers and literary journalists, particularly for Adégòkè’s focus in on some… Read More ›
“Our discomfort, my discomfort”: a review of ‘Anxious Joburg: The Inner Lives of a Global City’.
AiW Guest: Kagiso Nko. It is part of how Joburg narrates itself, in particular to itself. Editors’ Introduction – Nicky Falkof and Cobus van Staden. AiW note: This review of Anxious Joburg (Wits UP) was completed before our accompanying Review… Read More ›
Spotlight on… Ola Rotimi: The Revival of a Humanist
AiW Guest: Sanya Osha.With Osha’s Words on the Times – a Q&A subset inititated to connect us up in our experiences of the pandemic – below… Ola Rotimi is a major Nigerian dramatist who passed away in 2000. Some of… Read More ›
AiW long read: Caine 2021 – A prize coming of age
AiW Guest: Doseline Kiguru AiW note: As with every year since “Joining the Caine Prize ‘Blog-Carnival’” back in 2013 — Africa in Words has engaged with the AKO Caine Prize for African Writers in the run up to the winner… Read More ›
Review: Can We Really Decolonize the American University? – Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o at the University of Yale, 2021.
AiW Guest: Kadiatou Keita. It was exhilarating at first. I cheered Professor Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o on like he was performing. The March 2021 installment of the University of Yale’s English Department organised ‘African Writers in Conversation Series‘ featured Ngũgĩ wa… Read More ›
Q&A: Words on the Times – Kwame Osei-Poku
AiW note: Earlier this week we published Kwame Osei-Poku’s review of Limbe to Lagos: Nonfiction From Cameroon and Nigeria (2020, The Mantle). Compiled by Dami Ajayi, Dzekashu MacViban, and Emmanuel Iduma, Limbe to Lagos is an edited collection of non-fiction… Read More ›
Remembering Olive Schreiner 100 Years After Her Death
AiW Guest: Jade Munslow Ong. AiW note: The 11th of December 2020 marks 100 years since Olive Schreiner’s death. Here, Jade Munslow Ong discusses Schreiner’s legacies as a pioneering feminist, anti-colonialist and author of the first South African novel. 100… Read More ›
Review: The collector as compulsive mythologist – Wole Soyinka’s “Beyond Aesthetics”.
AiW Guest: Joseph Oduro-Frimpong. AiW note: With his review of Wole Soyinka’s book, Beyond Aesthetics: Use, Abuse, and Dissonance in African Art Traditions – “an intimate reflection on culture and tradition, creativity and power, that draws on a lifetime’s commitment to… Read More ›
Celebrating ‘The Decade Project’ with Brittle Paper: 10 AiW African Literary Cultural Faves
Literary blog and archiving platform Brittle Paper turns 10 this year! Happy birthday BP! This month we take up their invitation to join their celebrations in their #DecadeProject with a post marking the last ten years as a significant decade… Read More ›
Words on Teaching – Joanna Woods and Nicklas Hållén
AiW note: In our “Teaching” focus as part of our “Words on…” series, we’re thinking around print culture – books, images, texts, mags, spaces – and broad senses of what “teaching” might be, do, mean, or how it might produce… Read More ›
Q&A: Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike interviews Prof. Chielozona Eze
AiW Guest: Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike. In another of the in-depth conversations offered to us from AiW guest and friend Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike, Chielozona Eze discusses his work in ethics and literary study — particularly in relation to the uses to… Read More ›
Q&A: Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike with Prof. Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi
AiW Guest: Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike. Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature in the Department of English at North Carolina State University. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in African literature, postcolonial literary and cultural studies,… Read More ›
Where were the women? East African writing and the 1962 Makerere Conference.
AiW Guest: Anna Adima. The post-independence period in Kenya and Uganda is renowned for its burgeoning literature production. Uganda was the hub for these literary creativities in the 1960s, largely thanks to the English Department at Makerere University in Kampala,… Read More ›
Q&A: Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike interviews Prof. Cajetan Iheka
Cajetan Iheka is Associate Professor of English in the Department of English at Yale University, United States. In the following conversation with Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike – PhD Candidate and Vanier Scholar in the English and Film Studies department of the… Read More ›