AiW Guest: James Smith. During the Edinburgh International Book Festival I managed to catch three South African authors, Lauren Buekes and C.A. Davids, and Mark Gevisser. Three authors, writing in three different genres (although I realize that ‘genre’ in itself… Read More ›
An Edinburgh International Book Festival session with Damon Galgut: Arctic Summer (Umuzi/Atlantic, 2014). Part of the Book Festival’s ‘Voices from South Africa’ theme. Chaired by Claire Armitstead (Books Editor at the Guardian and the Observer). Arctic Summer is South African writer… Read More ›
AiW Guest Emma Shercliff Review of panel discussion with Bibi Bakare-Yusuf of Cassava Republic Press; Valerie Brandes of Jacaranda Books; Verna Wilkins of Tamarind Books and Susan Yearwood, agent and founder of Susan Yearwood Literary Agency. Chaired by Simi Dosekun…. Read More ›
AiW Guest Réhab Abdelghany Last month, the Royal African Society’s annual Africa Writes Festival brought to the UK an audience with the eminent Ghanaian playwright, poet, novelist and academic, Ama Ata Aidoo: a festive event in its own right. Having… Read More ›
AiW guest: James Smith. Broken Monsters and Broken Dreams I read Broken Monsters on a night flight from Cape Town, on my way to interview Lauren Beukes following her contribution to the Edinburgh Book Festival (2014 edition). It made the… Read More ›
AiW Guest Rehab Abdelghany The 3rd African Popular Cultures Workshop hosted at the University of Sussex concluded with a roundtable that brought together six academics and creative writers, who research, write from and about different parts of the African continent…. Read More ›
The second half of the African Popular Cultures Workshop at Sussex was held in a modern studio space called the ‘Creativity Zone’. Made up of three adjoining rooms, each of these exhibited different elements of work brought together under the… Read More ›
AiW Guest Lilly Kroll Inua Ellams is in a state of flux. He is scrolling through the iPad in front of him, searching for a poem by the American poet Terrance Hayes to read aloud to the crowd of people… Read More ›
At the end of March we – Katie and Kate – were lucky enough to be involved in organizing the third African Popular Cultures workshop at the University of Sussex. This collaboration between the Sussex Africa Centre PhD committee, tutors… Read More ›
By AiW Guest: Francesca Salvi. Offering three presentations from different department across the University of Sussex, the second postgraduate Sussex Africa Centre event, “Emerging Research Landscapes II”, furthered its aims of showcasing Africa-focused postgraduate research from a variety of perspectives,… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Ben Verghese. Africa Writes is the annual literary festival from the Royal African Society – a celebration of contemporary African literature from across the continent and the diaspora, held in early July. Last year (2013), AiW were at the festival covering… Read More ›
By AiW Guest: Ross Wignall. First, from us at AiW, a quick intro to the Sussex Africa Centre, a new initiative in its founding year, celebrating the University of Sussex’s history of international scholarship and engagement with the African continent…. Read More ›
AiW Guest Christine Singer. The widely anticipated film Of Good Report opened Film Africa 2013, London’s annual major celebration of film from Africa and the diaspora, on 1 November 2013 at the Hackney Picturehouse. Set in a small town in… Read More ›
Earlier in the year Africa in Words editors and authors attended Africa Writes 2013 in London. This literature and book festival organized by the Royal African Society hosted some of the most exciting names in contemporary African literature at the… Read More ›
The 5th annual European Conference on African Studies (ECAS) was held on June 26-29 this year in sunny Lisbon. A biannual affair, ECAS is the big European Africanist jamboree, organised by AEGIS (the Africa-Europe Group for Inter-disciplinary Studies) and was… Read More ›
The exhibit is centred around one Sierra Leonean mask, a ‘sowei’ mask of the all-female Sande societies, worn at ritual public celebrations and ceremonies by the societies’ high officials when masquerading as the spirit of the Sande as ndoli jowei (‘the… Read More ›
AiW Guest Rebecca Jones Is memory imagination or plagiarism? Are artists curators or creators of memory? Is memory determined by audience? Do we remember or embroider? – these were some of the questions we sought to explore in a one-day… Read More ›
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 ›
AiW guest Helen Cousins. 2012 was the year of ‘legacy’ – a notion popularised, of course, by the London 2012 Olympics. Four months on from the African Studies Association UK conference, I want to reflect on my personal ‘legacy’ from… Read More ›
AiW Guest Rebecca Jones. 2012’s ASAUK conference at the University of Leeds was my first ever ASAUK conference, and I went anticipating some interesting panels on African literature, hoping to meet fellow scholars of Yoruba, and, to be honest, expecting a… Read More ›
