Our #PastAndPresent archive dip today spotlights writer Maryse Condé (11 February 1934 – 2 April 2024), as her work and legacy is threaded through our archive posts. Two ‘couplets’ of reference emerge, set into conversation with each other as they… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Virginia Kelly Before Them, We (flipped eye, London, 2022) is a beautiful anthology of poems and collection of photographs curated by Ruth Sutoyé and Jacob Sam-La Rose. Part of a longer interdisciplinary project to excavate the lives and… Read More ›
Just under a week to go, with the last chance saloon doors swinging, we are dipping in to our archives: this AiW #PastAndPresent post may look back but has our sights set firmly forward to the Digital Festival Day (04… Read More ›
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 ›
AiW Guest: Sanya Osha …with a longer form read for us, at around 2.5k words… The recent ‘cancellation’ of Die Antwoord – the South African ‘zef’ subculture-proclaiming, alternative hip hop duo – and their subsequent withdrawal from the public eye,… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Tọ́pẹ́-ẸniỌbańkẹ́ Adégòkè. Odafe Atogun’s début novel, Taduno’s Song (2016), is an extended allegory about a people living through the tangle of social oppression and its attendant anxieties. Through a focus on music, specifically voice and song, it explores… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Pernille Nailor. 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 ›
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 ›
AiW Guest: Ugochukwu Anadị. ‘Femi Morgan’s most recent collection The Year of Fire (Baron’s Cafe, 2021) is a poetry of lamentations, of anger, and of defiant resilience. Forming itself around (re)negotiations, of the self and space, the slim volume of… Read More ›
AiW note: AiW editor Ellen Addis reviews Leila Aboulela’s novel, River Spirit (Saqi Books), a historical fiction narrative which takes place in 1880s Sudan and tracks the rise of the Mahdist Revolution. Accompanying the review today is Ellen’s Q&A with… Read More ›
AiW Guests: Tọ́pẹ́-ẸniỌbańkẹ́ Adégòkè with author Ever Obi. This Q&A and twinned review, “The Past Is Never Dead” – both by our AiW Guest, traveller, literary critic and writer Tọ́pẹ́-ẸniỌbańkẹ́ Adégòkè – may contain spoilers, but these are kept to the… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Tọ́pẹ́-ẸniỌbańkẹ́ Adégòkè. AiW note: Our Guest Reviewer,Tọ́pẹ́-ẸniỌbańkẹ́ Adégòkè, reviews Ever Obi’s second novel, a book which tackles the difficult and taboo subjects entangled around incestuous child sexuality in the home. Accompanying the review today is Adégòkè’s Q&A with… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Sanya Osha. Afrobeats is arguably a musical genre that initially evolved tied to the apron strings, albeit tenuously, of the magnificent legacy of Nigeria’s Fela Kuti – but one that has nonetheless managed to find its own direction… Read More ›
AiW note: Afritondo is a media and publishing platform which aims to improve diversity in publishing by offering African and Black minority writers a platform on which to tell their stories. Afritondo publishes stories, essays, commentaries, and poems by established,… Read More ›
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 ›
Retelling her experience of meeting a Nigerian man on a crowded street in Hong Kong, the persona in Sarah Lubala’s “I am never more black”, from her 37-strong debut poetry collection A History of Disappearance (2022), concludes that “we are… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Pernille Nailor. Written in a clear and powerful language that commands our immediate attention, Unoma Azuah’s latest publication, Embracing My Shadow, is a moving and powerful memoir focusing on the author’s experiences of growing up as lesbian in… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Camilla Delhanty Jamal Mahjoub’s The Fugitives (Canongate, 2021) is a novel in three parts, detailing the reformation of the fictional Khartoum jazz band, the Kamanga Kings. We open with protagonist, Rushdy, son of a late member of the… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Yamikani Mlangiza (Malawi) AiW note: Today’s post is the fifth in our annual guest reviews of the 2022 AKO Caine Prize 5 shortlisted stories. We’ll also be publishing Q&As with the shortlisted authors and, as in our previous years… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Innocent Akilimale Ngulube (Malawi) AiW note: The penultimate in our annual guest reviews of the 2022 AKO Caine Prize 5 shortlisted stories runs today. We’ll also be publishing Q&As with authors and others working with this year’s Prize,… Read More ›
africainwords.com 