AiW Guests: Meriel Clode, Lisa Walker, Antonia Cheema-Grubb & Harriet Lewis. Mukoma Wa Ngugi is a US-based Kenyan writer, who was born in Illinois and grew up in Nairobi. He is the author of eight books including crime novels Nairobi… Read More ›
Kate Wallis
“We can draw from the past and create something new, or we can just present the past as it was”: Talking Nostalgia, Memory, and Creative Collaboration with Wanjeri Gakuru
AiW Guests: Isobella Norman, Leyla Mohammed and Leoni Fretwell. Wanjeri Gakuru is a freelance journalist, essayist and filmmaker invested in gender equality and social justice. From 2018, Wanjeri has been the Managing Editor of Jalada Africa, a Pan-African writers’ collective… Read More ›
Q&A with Ayesha Harruna Attah: ‘The Deep Blue Between’
AiW Guests: Trang Vu, Hannah Judge & Naomi Osborne. Ayesha Harruna Attah is a Senegal-based Ghanaian writer. She is the author of Harmattan Rain, Saturday’s Shadows and The Hundred Wells of Salaga and has recently published a young adult novel,… Read More ›
Our 2020 Festive Favourites: Season’s Reading from Africa in Words
After a difficult year for everyone, the holiday time is looking harder than before. A time to normally spend with family and relaxation has become one of stress and uncertainty. However, we hope that the holidays can still be a… Read More ›
2013 Africa Writes #P&P – Q&A: Novelist, poet and literary scholar Mukoma wa Ngugi
AiW Note: As part of our Africa Writes #PastAndPresent weekend, in the absence of the in-person festival in 2020, this Q&A is the first in our cast back over our coverage of Africa Writes over the years, and is republished… Read More ›
Words on… Past & Present: re-presenting Temitayo Olofinlua’s review of Jumoke Verissimo’s ‘A Small Silence’ – In the Dark
AiW note: Reposting this, Temitayo Olofinlua’s review, sees it as the third post this week in a mini-series around Jumoke Verissimo’s haunting and lyrical debut novel published last year, A Small Silence (Cassava Republic). Earlier in the week, Verissimo offered us… Read More ›
Q&A with Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King: “No one stays static, so language should not be static.”
AiW Guests: Korranda Harris & Birhanu Gessese Maaza Mengiste is an Ethiopian-American writer who has published two novels: Beneath the Lion’s Gaze (2010) and The Shadow King (2019). Mengiste’s fiction paints engaging portraits of life and engages with the themes… Read More ›
Review: Yolande Mukagasana’s ‘Not My Time to Die’
AiW Guests: Inês Martinho Ferreira and Kiera Fields Kwibuka means ‘to remember’ and describes the annual commemoration of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Last year, as part of Kwibuka 25, Rwandan publisher Huza Press published Yolande Mukagasana’s… Read More ›
Q&A with writer Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi: On Writing Place
AiW Guests: Brittany Willis and Catrin Williams Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi is a Ugandan writer currently living in Manchester. Her first novel, Kintu, won the Kwani 2013 Manuscript Project and was longlisted for the Etisalat Prize in 2014. Her most recent… Read More ›
Q&A with Angela Wachuka – Literary producer and co-founder of Book Bunk
AiW Guests: Jess Irving and Jessica Smith Angela Wachuka is one of Kenya’s leading literary producers. In 2018, with Wanjiru Koinange, she founded Book Bunk. From 2008 to 2017, Wachuka was Executive Director of Kwani Trust, where she published Africa’s… Read More ›
Q&A with writer Olumide Popoola: “If we can’t imagine anything different, we can never strive for change”
AiW note: This conversation follows on from our cast back to last March (2019) and Chelsea Haith’s review of the Q&A’s main text, Popoola’s 2017 novel, When We Speak of Nothing: ‘Experimental…Representative and Complex’ – #PastAndPresent . AiW Guests: René… Read More ›
Responding to Carli Coetzee’s “Unsettling the Air-conditioned Room”: “Laboratory Building” and Africa-based and focused Literary Activism (2/2)
AiW Guest Bwesigye bwa Mwesigire AiW note: Africa in Words has long been engaged with the work of Carli Coetzee, and we particularly admire the care that she takes in thinking through the nature of our work as academics and… Read More ›
Review – The Smouldering Fires of Aké Arts & Book Festival 2019
AiW Guest: Temitayo Olofinlua Earlier in the year, I watched The Hate U Give and If Beale Street Could Talk and, through these films, saw how the American justice system hurls itself against black bodies until it is bent out… Read More ›
Q&A: Zaahida Nabagereka on Afrikult. & widening access to African literatures
AiW Guest: Abbi Bayliss Zaahida Nabagereka recently completed work on her doctoral thesis at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (SOAS) focusing on the politics of language and its impact on literature production in Uganda. Based… Read More ›
In the Dark: Review of Jumoke Verissimo’s ‘A Small Silence’
AiW Guest: Temitayo Olofinlua Prof, a pro-democracy activist, has just returned from prison after years of incarceration. And now he chooses to sit in darkness. Whenever he goes out, he is shrouded from head to toe in a dark cloak…. Read More ›
Q&A: Margaret Busby on ‘New Daughters of Africa’
AiW Guests: Ellen Mitchell and Sophie Kulik Margaret Busby (OBE) is a Ghanaian born editor, publisher, writer and broadcaster based in London, and has been described as the “Doyenne of Black British Publishing”. Busby was Britain’s youngest and first black… Read More ›
Q&A: The ‘Self-Confessed Rambler’: In Conversation with TJ Dema
AiW Guests: Dani Payne and Isobel Clark TJ Dema is a poet and arts administrator, currently living in Bristol. As a spoken word poet, she reads her poetry all over the world. In 2018, she won the Sillerman Prize for… Read More ›
‘Every time we have an opportunity to view other people or other places, it adds value to our own lives’: Talking inclusion, community and joy with ‘Rafiki’ filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu
AiW Guests: Ben Apea, Aysha Taylor & Molly West Wanuri Kahiu is a Kenyan author, film director and producer, who has been making films since 2009. Her films From a Whisper, Pumzi, For Our Land and Rafiki engage with a… Read More ›
“Corridors of storytelling” in contemporary African culture: Small Magazines at Africa Writes – Sunday July 1st, 2018
AiW Guest: Sumayya Lee. AiW note: This is the fifth in a series of posts for Africa in Words exploring the networked series of research, events, and discussions, ‘Small Magazines, Literary Networks and Self-Fashioning in Africa and its Diasporas’. Here… Read More ›
Q&A: Temitayo Olofinlua on Book Distribution and Literary Activism
AiW Guest: Serah Kasembeli I had never crossed the border to the neighbouring Uganda, even though our home is very close to the Kenya-Uganda Busia border. The idea of crossing into what has always been there yet unexplored, resonated in many… Read More ›
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