Warsan Shire is a Kenyan-born Somali poet, writer and educator based in London. Her poetry reads as both artistic and activist practice, documenting stories of journey, trauma and sexual violence, alienation, assimilation, transformation and recuperation. Warsan’s début book, Teaching My Mother… Read More ›
Spotted around the web: short stories, novels and debate. Bakwa magazine: Why does the West ignore intellectual property when Africa is concerned? What does the New York Times really know about music in Africa? Can hip-hop save an artist’s life?, Fashion:… Read More ›
Last week saw the announcement of the shortlist for the 14th Caine Prize for African Writing. The shortlist of 5 stories was selected by judges Gus Casely-Hayford (Chair), Sokari Douglas Camp, John Sutherland, Nathan Hensley and Leila Aboulela out of… Read More ›
This post is part of the series Gilroy’s Black Atlantic. Click here to read the first post of the series, here to read the second and here to read the third AiW Guest Tiago C. Fernandes SIDE A: FELA KUTI Fela Anikulapo Kuti was born in… Read More ›
With the passing off on March 22, 2013 of Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian prolific writer, one has to admit that the founding father of African literature has forsaken his pen forever. While the reference that Achebe is beheld as the… Read More ›
AiW Guest Dzekashu MacViban In December 2012, I travelled to Nairobi for the 2012 Kwani? Litfest as part of the Goethe Institut’s pan-African exchange programme ‘Moving Africa’. Of the various panels and readings I attended four stood out: our Moving… Read More ›
AiW Guest Alexander Howard. 1. As the author and editor Jenna Bass points out in the first instalment of her recent interview with Katie Reid of Africa in Words, the bi-monthly fiction magazine Jungle Jim arose out of a shared desire… Read More ›
Further to the previous post, other events joining ‘Censorship Today’ as part of the World Writers’ Conference at Open Book, Cape Town: Excited to see that Njabulo Ndebele and Antjie Krog will be in discussion – ‘Should Literature be Political’, 20 September… Read More ›
I was at the Cape Town Book Fair back in June (June 15-17, 2012). I approached a range of publishers and booksellers exhibiting and asked what was ‘new’ for them in South African fiction, and to give me their latest fiction-must-reads –… Read More ›
Words without Borders, an online magazine of international literature in English translation, seeks submissions of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry for an issue of African women’s writing.
Thanks to Evelyn Owen and her blog African Art in London for the heads-up for Willem Boshoff at the Tate Modern last week – a highly charismatic, interesting artist’s talk, laced with Boshoff’s characteristic humour – from one of South… Read More ›
My next few posts on ‘Africa in Words’ are going to be focused on things I’ve been up to ‘professionally’, rather than my ‘research’ – although the two have some nicely blurred lines and intersections. This is partly because I… Read More ›
Last month I was in Nairobi for the launch of the documentary ‘Heal the Nation’. This 30 minute film was created by Picha Mtaani (Swahili for ‘street exhibition’) a UN-funded initiative that focuses on reconciliation through ‘photographic exhibitions and debate’… Read More ›
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