AiW note: Last week we ran reviews of each of the five shortlisted stories for the AKO Caine Prize 2021 by five new AiW Guest authors, re-opening our now annual critical conversations and feedback around the writing, the work, and that… Read More ›
Katie Reid
Q&A Caine 2021: Words on the Times – Meron Hadero
AiW note: Last week we ran reviews of each of the five shortlisted stories for the AKO Caine Prize 2021 by five new AiW Guest authors, re-opening our now annual critical conversations and feedback around the writing, the work, and that… Read More ›
Q&A Caine 2021: Words on the Times – Doreen Baingana
AiW note: Last week we ran reviews of each of the five shortlisted stories for the AKO Caine Prize 2021 by five new AiW Guest authors, re-opening our now annual critical conversations and feedback around the writing, the work, and that… Read More ›
Q&A Caine 2021: Words on the Times – Goretti Kyomuhendo, Chair of the Judges
With AiW Guest: Goretti Kyomuhendo. AiW note: Last week we ran reviews of each of the five shortlisted stories for the AKO Caine Prize 2021 by five new AiW Guest authors, re-opening our now annual critical conversations and feedback around… Read More ›
Review Caine 2021: “Repeat after me: My mother has been ushered into the spirit world” – Iryn Tushabe’s ‘A Separation’
We are absolutely delighted to announce the Shortlist for the 2021 AKO Caine Prize for African Writing! 🎉🙌🏿 Congratulations to all five of our shortlisted writers 📚@dbaing01 @remythequill @meronhadero @TroyOnyango @wordsweaver Read the stories here: https://t.co/ZezqOVweS7 pic.twitter.com/4O4XtynJXf — The AKO… Read More ›
Review Caine 2021: Satirizing Injustice – Rémy Ngamije’s ‘The Giver of Nicknames’
We are absolutely delighted to announce the Shortlist for the 2021 AKO Caine Prize for African Writing! 🎉🙌🏿 Congratulations to all five of our shortlisted writers 📚@dbaing01 @remythequill @meronhadero @TroyOnyango @wordsweaver Read the stories here: https://t.co/ZezqOVweS7 pic.twitter.com/4O4XtynJXf — The AKO… Read More ›
Q&A: Words on the Times – Shine Your Eye lead actress Dienye Waboso
AiW note: In February this year, Volcano Theatre in Toronto reached out to Africa in Words to help publicise the late Binyavanga Wainaina’s play Shine Your Eye. Shine your Eye is a one-act play written by Binyavanga Wainaina. Set in… Read More ›
Review: Building Bridges through Contemporary Arts, Panels 1&2
AiW Guest: Clive Allanso. AiW note: Anticipating the final panel in the “Building Bridges through Contemporary Arts“ (BBTCA) series – “Responsible Solutions to New Obstacles” (June 30th, 2pm BST) – Clive Allanso summarises the conversations and debates of the previous… Read More ›
Q&A: Words on the Times – M Lynx Qualey for ArabLit
AiW note: ArabLit describe themselves as a translator-centered “loose collective” that produce a website, quarterly magazine (ArabLit Quarterly), and a limited book series (ALQ Books) focused on Arabic literatures in translation. They also run an annual ArabLit Story Prize, an… Read More ›
Q&A: Words on the Times – Kimberley Nyamhondera, Press Officer & Marketing and Communications Manager
AiW note: Following Zahra Banday’s review of Chibundu Onuzo’s latest novel Sankofa last week and her accompanying Q&A with Chibundu — where they chat process and writing and various inspirations — we are excited to be sharing a Words on… Read More ›
Q&A – Chibundu Onuzo, author of ‘Sankofa’
AiW Guest: Zahra Banday AiW note: Following up on her review of Sankofa, “a fresh, funny and moving take on the theme of identity and place… crafted with gentle care but harbouring brutal realities,” Zahra Banday interviews its award-winning author,… Read More ›
Review: “You only need the mbira” – T.L. Huchu’s ‘The Library of the Dead’
AiW Guest: Ranka Primorac. By the time I twigged that T. L. Huchu’s The Library of the Dead was not aimed at my age group, it was no longer an option to stop reading. The author of the deft appropriation… Read More ›
Review: Making Death Part of Daily Life – Véronique Tadjo’s ‘In The Company Of Men’
AiW note: Véronique Tadjo is a writer and painter from Ivory Coast. This year marks the release of her latest novel in translation, In the Company of Men: the Ebola Tales (with HopeRoad Publishing, first pub. En Compagnie des Hommes,… Read More ›
Q&A: Words on the Times – Marina Novelli on “Building Bridges through Contemporary Arts”
The Building Bridges through Contemporary Arts Online Panel Discussions Series is part of a University of Brighton initiative that facilitates a contemporary art-based dialogue between key stakeholders from Africa and Europe. Based on participants’ personal and professional local and global… 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 ›
Q&A: Words on the Times – Nduka Otiono
AiW Guest: Nduka Otiono, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada AiW note: Yesterday we celebrated the African release of Wreaths for a Wayfarer (Narrative Landscape Press), published in honour of writer, academic, and esteemed beloved mentor and Nigerian public intellectual, Pius Adesanmi, who lost… 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 ›
Q&A with Abdulrazak Gurnah about latest novel ‘Afterlives’: “These stories have been with me all along…”
By AiW Guest: Judyannet Muchiri.
[…]
Judyannet Muchiri: This is a heavy story and yet there are moments of stillness, joy, love, and tenderness, if you will. I wonder how it is for you as a writer to capture this human existence in its totality as you have done in Afterlives.
Abdulrazak Gurnah: My interest was not to write about the war or the ugliness of colonialism. Instead I want to make sure the context in which war and colonialism happened is understood. And that the people in that context were people with entire existences. I want to show how people who are wounded by the war and by life itself cope in these circumstances. Using the unexpected kindnesses in the story, I wanted to show that there is potential for kindness in people and sometimes circumstances can draw such kindness from us.
“Such noise and screams and blood”: A Review of Abdulrazak Gurnah’s ‘Afterlives’ (2020)
By AiW Guest: Judyannet Muchiri.
In the wake of a bad dream, one of the protagonists in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Afterlives, Hamza, laments: “such noise and screams and blood”. These words keep resounding when one thinks about the disruption caused by colonialism in Africa – how our grandparents and ancestors must have felt with the arrival of those who set themselves up as colonial masters.
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 ›
