AiW Guests: Koleka Putuma Interviewed by: Siobhan Bahl, Freya Moulton and Tessa Rhodes On 22 February, 2022 “This is what it is, or what it was, this is the evolution of it all…” Koleka Putuma is an esteemed South African… Read More ›
Ellen Addis
Review: Connection and Legacy – Remembering ‘Before Them, We’ (2022)
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 ›
Q&As: Kadija George Sesay – Judging the Caine Prize 2023
AiW note: We’re into day 2 in our continuing Words on… Q&A series this week, publishing a range of interviews around the UK-based short story award, the Caine Prize for African Writing, 2023. A few firsts have re-shaped the Prize… Read More ›
Q&A: Serawit Bekele Debele —Literatures of the Horn of Africa, a conversation series
AiW Guests Interviewers: Farida Elshafei, Ilana Graham, Lauryn Jenkins, Noha Choudhry. Interviewee: Serawit Bekele Debele. Interview Date: 14th December 2021 AiW note: This is one in a series of interviews carried out by undergraduate students as part of the module… Read More ›
Review: The Renegade Poet, ‘Femi Morgan, coming through ‘The Year of Fire’
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 ›
Review and Q&A: Leila Aboulela’s ‘River Spirit’ – Rewriting the Footnotes of Sudanese Colonial History
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 ›
Refocusing Le Retour: Three Franco-Senegalese Works
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 ›
Q&A – Ayo Oyeku Words on the Times
AiW note: Today we bring you an inspiring Words on the Times – a Q&A series initiated to connect up our experiences of life and work as the pandemic hit – with writer and publisher Ayo Oyeku. Ayo Oyeku is a… Read More ›
Spotlight on… Ola Rotimi: The Revival of a Humanist
AiW Guest: Sanya Osha.With Osha’s Words on the Times – a Q&A subset inititated to connect us up in our experiences of the pandemic – below… Ola Rotimi is a major Nigerian dramatist who passed away in 2000. Some of… Read More ›
Q&A: Words on the Times – TVOTRIBE
AiW Note: We are happy to be able to share here a Q&A with the founder of online writing and creative arts community TVOTRIBE, Victoria Olajide. In 2021, TVOTRIBE celebrated their second anniversary with activities positioned around the theme “The… Read More ›
Review: Can We Really Decolonize the American University? – Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o at the University of Yale, 2021.
AiW Guest: Kadiatou Keita. It was exhilarating at first. I cheered Professor Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o on like he was performing. The March 2021 installment of the University of Yale’s English Department organised ‘African Writers in Conversation Series‘ featured Ngũgĩ wa… Read More ›
Celebrating World Poetry Day with readings from Wreaths for A Wayfarer
AiW Guests: Nduka Otiono and Uche Peter Umezurike. AiW note: by way of introduction to our Guest post here, we are very pleased to be able to share with the editors news of the African release of Wreaths for a… Read More ›
Tasting Feelings: A Review of Iquo DianaAbasi’s ‘Efo Riro’
AiW Guest: Tọ́pẹ́-ẸniỌbańkẹ́ Adégòkè. Iquo DianaAbasi’s debut collection of short stories, Efo Riro (Parresia 2020), puts meat on the bones of the observation that the sense of taste is somehow wired to things that we find delightful or repulsive. Consider psychiatry where… Read More ›
Q&A: Words on the Times – Lizzy Attree
AiW note: Earlier this week we published Lizzy Attrees’s review of They Called You Dambudzo: A Memoir by Flora Veit-Wild (2021, Jacana Media). At the book’s centre is the double heartbeat of Veit-Wild’s relationship with the late Zimbabwean writer, Dambudzo… Read More ›
Review: ‘They Called You Dambudzo: A Memoir’ by Flora Veit-Wild
AiW Guest: Lizzy Attree. Flora Veit-Wild presents this compelling book as a memoir, and it does contain some personal details of her early life in Germany which supplement and enrich the portrayal of her love affair with the Zimbabwean writer… Read More ›
A Sense of Africa in The Exploration of Reminiscences: A Review of Limbe to Lagos: Nonfiction From Cameroon and Nigeria
AiW Guest: Kwame Osei-Poku (Ph.D.), University of Ghana. When a collection of stories succeeds in making its readers identify with and care about real issues, triggering sensations of empathy and reinforcing readers’ own reminiscences, we realise the powerful impact of… Read More ›
Q&A: ABC-Words on the Times – Elma Shaw of Cotton Tree Press
AiW note: To celebrate the past thirty years of independent distributing and bookselling at African Books Collective (ABC), we are running a series highlighting the wonderful work of those who make up ABC. We will be talking to some of… Read More ›
Q&A: ABC-Words on the Times – Irene Staunton of Weaver Press
AiW note: To celebrate the past thirty years of independent distributing and bookselling at African Books Collective (ABC), we are running a series highlighting the wonderful work of those who make up ABC. We will be talking to some of… Read More ›
Q&A: ABC-Words on the Times – Fay Gadsden of Gadsden Publishers
AiW note: To celebrate the past thirty years of independent distributing and bookselling at African Books Collective (ABC), we are running a series highlighting the wonderful work of those who make up ABC. We will be talking to some of… Read More ›
In other Words… AiW news and December’s wrap
Happy New Year! After a short break, we move through the changed circumstances, timelines and spaces of now, and catch up on our monthly round-up of ‘other words’ from the end of 2020 – news on AiW’s radar, collated from… Read More ›