AiW Author: Bwesigye Bwa Mwesigire Sophie Alal founded Deyu African, a non-profit that publishes folk tales, literary work, commentary and journalism about arts and culture. She is an accomplished writer of short stories, poetry, and flash fiction. Her work has… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Gráinne O’Connell Witch Girl is a 2015 novel that reads like a play. Indeed, I hope to see more titles by this author, including plays. The title of the book, Witch Girl, reflects in part that the protagonist… Read More ›
Teju Cole: Black on All Sides 22 March 2016 19:00-21:30 Logan Hall, Institute of Education, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL Decolonising Our Minds are pleased to welcome Teju Cole, world-renowned writer, art historian and photographer, for a talk at… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Iquo DianaAbasi Eke. This month, AiW Guest, poet Iquo DianaAbasi Eke, continues our deep dive in The Eight New Generation African Poets with her review of Peter Akinlabi’s A Pagan Place. In this collection, Akinlabi comes across as an… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Thando Njovane. As demonstrated by his substantial and sophisticated body of work, South Africa’s Ivan Vladislavić is certainly one of the most remarkable and versatile writers of our time. Vladislavić’s latest gift to letters is the insightful, elaborate,… Read More ›
* The African Literary Hustle* Guest Editors: Mukoma wa Ngugi and Laura Murphy When African literature is published in the West, it is too often realist, in English, and always in the spirit of Chinua Achebe. But romance, science fiction, fantasy, epic, experimental… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Helen Cousins. What a bittersweet eulogy this is to the suffering of Black women at the hands (and often the fists) of Black men; not always surviving, as indicated by the past tense of the title. The novel… Read More ›
AiW Guest Shadreck Chikoti I get afraid, very afraid, when somebody, anybody, prescribes to me which books to read and not to read. When somebody gives me a template of what African literature ought to look like. And boy! You… Read More ›
This month, Guest Reviewer Rehaana Manek continues our deep dive into the Eight New Generation African Poets. Libsekal writes as though she has witnessed. Witnessed violence, witnessed empathy, witnessed intimacy and has witnessed the bearing of heavy things. Chris Abani,… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Danielle Faye Tran. “It is my wish […] that people should know I died of AIDS” (27) -from a letter written by character Zola to be read aloud at her vigil The spread of HIV creates a tense… Read More ›
First: these chapbooks are beautiful. Even on an e-reader, sapped of gravitas, Ibibio artist Imo Nse Imeh’s cover art adds a Chagall-ian layer of both modernism and ethnic nostalgia to this box set, to which Peter Akinlabi, Viola Allo,… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Réhab Abdelghany Ebola ’76 is a short novel by acclaimed Sudanese writer Amir Tag-Elsir, whose The Grub Hunter (2010) was short-listed for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2011 and long-listed for the Arab Booker. Published originally… Read More ›
Spatialities and Colonial Legacies Locations in Postcolonial Literature Journal of Postcolonial Writing Deadline 15 February 2016 Space has been a central concern of postcolonial studies since the 1978 publication of Said’s Orientalism and its exposition of the ‘imaginative geographies’ of colonial conquest…. Read More ›
Cassava Republic Press, a leading African publishing house, is set to launch in the UK in April 2016 it was announced today. Introducing an eclectic list of quality literary fiction, crime, young adult fiction, children’s books, and romantic fiction under… Read More ›
This year the Aké Review (the official journal of the Aké Arts and Book Festival) asked guests ten questions ahead of the festival – from whether they write in their mother tongue to what karaoke song they would like to sing. Two of these… Read More ›
This year the Aké Review (the official journal of the Aké Arts and Book Festival) asked guests ten questions ahead of the festival – from whether they write in their mother tongue to what karaoke song they would like to sing. … Read More ›
As a second-generation American, Thanksgiving seemed to me a less-accessible holiday than, say, Halloween: my grandparents weren’t always available and, frankly, turkey and football still both seem pointless. After leaving the country of my birth behind, though, I’ve started to… Read More ›
AiW Guest Bwesigye bwa Mwesigire I thought that Ben Okri’s December 2014 infamous Guardian essay in which he berated African and black writers for suffering under a mental tyranny of subject was too prescriptive and an inaccurate reading of contemporary African… Read More ›
AiW Guest: Madhu Krishnan In the just sixteen years that it has existed, the Caine Prize for African Writing has made an indelible mark, if not on African literature itself, then certainly on the critical discourses which surround it. With… Read More ›
Shortly before Namwali Serpell became the sixteenth winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing, I had the chance to ask her a couple of questions about reading her winning story ‘The Sack’ and its many modes of uncertainty. This Q&A forms part… Read More ›
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