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 ›
Ngugi wa Thiong’o
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 ›
In other Words… AiW news and March’s wrap
This month marks one year since we began our wrap ups of African literary and cultural news! Since then, we have moved to monthly wraps and as we move through the changed circumstances, timelines and spaces of now, we catch… Read More ›
“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 ›
A Review of ‘Nairobi Noir’, a collection of short stories edited by Peter Kimani
AiW Guest: Maëline Le Lay. Initially published by Akashic Books, the New York publisher of Kenyan novelist and journalist Peter Kimani (author of the highly regarded Dance of the Jakaranda), this collection of short stories complements the rich collection of “noir”… Read More ›
Where were the women? East African writing and the 1962 Makerere Conference.
AiW Guest: Anna Adima. The post-independence period in Kenya and Uganda is renowned for its burgeoning literature production. Uganda was the hub for these literary creativities in the 1960s, largely thanks to the English Department at Makerere University in Kampala,… 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 ›
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 ›
Q&A: Peter Kimani, author of Dance of the Jakaranda, talks with Maëline Le Lay
AiW Guest: Maëline Le Lay Peter Kimani is an award-winning author. He was 1 of 3 poets commissioned to compose and present a poem marking Obama’s 2009 inauguration. Born in 1971 in Kenya, he has won the Jomo Kenyatta Prize… Read More ›
Event: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, in conversation (17th April, Harvard Book Store, USA)
We are delighted to announce that Harvard Book Store and the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research will welcome renowned Kenyan writer and scholar Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o—author of the acclaimed novel Wizard of the Crow—for a discussion of his… Read More ›
Okey Ndibe’s orchestra
AiW Guest: Pelu Awofeso “I am a student of Chinua Achebe,” Okey Ndibe says near the end of his reading at University of Lagos’ Faculty of Arts last July. “But as a writer, my temperament is between [Wole] Soyinka, Achebe… Read More ›
CfP: Global Africa Month – the Ngugi Workshop, 2 – 4 May 2017, Vienna, deadline: 15 March 2017
Call for Papers: Global Africa Month – the Ngugi Workshop Prof Adams Bodomo Workshop on Strategies for the Promotion of African Language Literature University of Vienna Global African Diaspora Studies (GADS) Research Platform And Department of African Studies May 2… Read More ›
Acts of mutiny: the Caine Prize and ‘African Literature’
By AiW Guest Ranka Primorac. In London, a three-day literary festival called Africa Writes took place recently at the British Library (BL). The festival is now in its fourth year, it hosts an ever-widening stream of writers, readers and publishers,… Read More ›
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s ‘Weep Not, Child’ – 50 Years On
AiW Guest Sarah Jilani This year marks the 50th anniversary of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Weep Not, Child. When the novel was originally published in 1964 by Heinemann’s African Writers Series, its author James Ngugi was a young Kenyan student at… Read More ›
The Absence of African Literature in American Legal Academia
AiW Guest: Dustin Zacks. The American Law and Literature movement consistently draws discussion material from the same wells. Consider a cursory search of just one database, HeinOnline, commonly used to browse American law reviews: one could spend countless hours perusing… 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 ›