AiW Guest Mukoma Wa Ngugi I love to write and have been doing it for a long time now. Along the way I have learned, mostly through mistakes, a few things that I want to list here below with the… Read More ›
african authors
Spotlight on…Akinwumi Isola
This post is the first in an occasional series of writer profiles, looking especially at those working in African languages. For readers and speakers of Yoruba, Akínwùmí Ìsòlá [pronounced Ishola] needs little introduction. A charismatic and stern-looking figure affectionately nicknamed… Read More ›
South African authors (and more besides) at the Edinburgh International Book Festival -10-26 August, 2013
The Edinburgh International Book Festival, “the world’s largest public celebration of the written word, right in the heart of Edinburgh”, starts this Saturday, August 10th, and is celebrating its 30th birthday this year (fanfare! trrumpets!). Among the variety of dynamic… Read More ›
Borrowing the bookshelf: lessons in [virtual bookshelf] husbandry
I came across a meme recently “You know you’re a bookaholic when…” One was “when the first thing you look at in a friend’s house is the bookshelves”. I identified. I house sat for another Africa in Words writer recently,… Read More ›
Q&A: Colleen Higgs – publisher Modjaji Books
Colleen Higgs is the publisher and passionate, dynamic force behind Modjaji Books, a small independent press based in Cape Town, South Africa. Inspired by Modjadji, the Rain Queen of Limpopo, a powerful female force for good, growth, new life, and… Read More ›
‘Love is Power or Something Like That’ by A. Igoni Barrett – review
It feels exceptionally hard in a short review to do justice to the layers of story, character and life in A. Igoni Barrett’s second collection of short stories Love is Power or Something Like That. The characters that people these stories range across generation… Read More ›
Q&A: Novelist, poet and literary scholar Mukoma wa Ngugi
Mukoma wa Ngugi, son of world renowned African writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o, is currently in London with his father for a public conversation at the Africa Writes festival, and the launch of his new crime fiction novel Black Star Nairobi…. Read More ›
‘Ghana Must Go’ by Taiye Selasi – review
AiW Guest Emylia Hall One of my favourite quotes on the subject of the craft of writing comes from the Pulitzer Prize-winner, Katherine Anne Porter: ‘Get so well acquainted with your characters that they live and grow in your imagination exactly… Read More ›
Blogging the Caine Prize: Tope Folarin’s ‘Miracle’
There were moments in Tope Folarin’s ‘Miracle’ where I found myself part of a sweaty crowd in a packed church, as the pastor says ‘let us pray’, the ‘tinny Nigerian gospel music’ rings out, and prayer commences with ‘sweating and… Read More ›
Literary Prizes: Joining the Caine Prize ‘Blog-Carnival’
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 ›
CFP: Remembering Chinua Achebe
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 ›
The Chimurenga Chronic, now-now – first print issue of pan-African gazette
Now available from Chimurenga [from the Shona word for “revolutionary struggle”]: the CHRONIC – a new pan-African quarterly print gazette, with supplementary books review magazine CHRONIC BOOKS – see below for a preview of Billy Kahora‘s article on the Nairobi noir. The first issue takes… Read More ›
Travels in Noo Saro-Wiwa’s Transwonderland
AiW Guest Steve Haines Working in the world of ‘international development’ I’m easily tempted to measure a country by metrics and indices. What interests me is the percentage of the population with access to safe drinking water, the primary school… Read More ›
Sites of Memory, University of Birmingham, 17 February 2013
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 ›
Yari Yari Ntoaso: Continuing the Dialogue
Yari Yari Ntoaso: Continuing the Dialogue is a symposium of literature by women of African descent taking place in Accra, Ghana, May 16-19, 2013. This free gathering will put writers, critics, and readers from across Africa, the USA, Europe, and the Caribbean in dialogue with… Read More ›
AiW live on SAfm’s ‘Word of Mouth’ feature prompts a revisit of our Q&A (Pt 2) with Jenna Bass – Editor and co-founder of African pulp fiction magazine Jungle Jim.
Chatting to Nancy Richards about AiW on SAfm’s Word of Mouth feature, part of the Literature show, on Sunday (03/03), I was struck once again by the significance of the generative potential of literary and intellectual networks across the continent,… Read More ›
Q&A: Goretti Kyomuhendo – Writer, Co-founder of FEMRITE and Founder-Director of the African Writers Trust
As avid AiW readers will know, last Autumn at the African Studies Association of the UK Biennial Conference, Katie Reid and I co-convened a series of panels on ‘The “post-millennial context” and African writing in English: Writing, production and reception since… Read More ›
Genre and the New Geographies of World Literature: A look at Jungle Jim’s “South African Sci-Fi” issue
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 ›
From Roswell to Rosebank – South African SF and Jungle Jim
AiW Guest Graham Riach. On the front cover of issue 16 of Jungle Jim,a starry sky hangs low over two Zulu tribesmen, assegais held high behind their shields. Looming towards them is a muscle-bound giant with an insectoid robotic head,… Read More ›
‘Without warning, everything became possible’: pulp fiction and the rise of Jungle Jim
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 ›
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