We are delighted to share the news that submissions have opened for the Geko Mofolo Prize for Outstanding Fiction in Sesotho. The Prize is awarded in July in South Africa and its submissions are open to all Basotho in the continent… Read More ›
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Call for Applications: Write your World, Creative Writing Course with Billy Kahora (Deadline: 5 February 2019)
Free Fiction & Creative Writing Course: Write your World Bristolian, African & Caribbean Literature Fully funded by the University of Bristol, this 8-week course requires you to have no previous qualifications. Write your World with Billy Kahora The short story… Read More ›
Ake Review 2015: interviews, short fiction and art
AiW Guest: Tọ́pẹ́ Salaudeen-Adégòkè Tọ́pẹ́ Salaudeen-Adégòkè continues his in-depth discussion of the Ake Review 2015. Read Part I, which discusses poetry, here. Ten Questions: African writers discuss their work The Ten Questions section of the Ake Review features festival guests… Read More ›
Do African Literary Festivals Culture (?): Bwesigye Bwa Mwesigire on the Writivism Experience
Bwesigye Bwa Mwesigire was formerly Programs Director at Writivism Festival. This piece, reflecting on his experience of Writivism, was adapted from a presentation he made at the 5th Annual African Popular Cultures Workshop at Sussex University on 19 April 2016. The… Read More ›
Caine Prize 2016: “Memories We Lost”—The Text, Its Readers and the World, a review by Pede Hollist
AiW Guest Pede Hollist The biography at the end of “Memories We Lost” quotes South African writer, filmmaker, and photographer Lidudumalingani as saying, “I am fascinated by mental illnesses, having seen my own extended relatives deal with it.” He also… Read More ›
Q&A: Pede Hollist
Posted in the run up to our review of the Caine Prize 2015 anthology Lusaka Punk and Other Stories, as part of a follow up series to our 2015 Blogging the Caine Prize – open to the ongoing public conversation the prize, and… Read More ›
Q&A: Namwali Serpell
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 ›
Blogging the Caine Prize: Segun Afolabi’s ‘The Folded Leaf’
AiW Guest: John Uwa In reviewing Segun Afolabi’s ‘The Folded Leaf’, a short story shortlisted for Caine Prize 2015, one must resist the temptation to mounting up praises on the text. It is certainly a well-articulated and thematically focused text; and… Read More ›
Blogging the Caine Prize: F.T. Kola’s ‘A Party for the Colonel’
AiW Guest: Doseline Kiguru Writing in 2000, only six years after the end of apartheid, Sarah Nuttall and Cheryl-Ann Michael in Senses of Culture decried that South African cultural and literary imaginings have been based mainly on the following frames:… Read More ›
Africa in Words readings with Billy Kahora, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi and Alex Ntung at ASAUK Conference, 9th September 2014
Africa in Words, in association with the African Studies Association UK, Writing Our Legacy and Urbanflo Creative Partnerships, is delighted to present: WRITING EAST AND CENTRAL AFRICA: ACROSS GENRES IN PROSE Readings with authors Billy Kahora, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi and… Read More ›
‘Love is Power or Something Like That’ by A. Igoni Barrett – review
It feels exceptionally hard in a short review to do justice to the layers of story, character and life in A. Igoni Barrett’s second collection of short stories Love is Power or Something Like That. The characters that people these stories range across generation… Read More ›
Bayan Layi : Blogging the Caine Prize
I just talk without direction, like the harmattan wind that just blows and blows, scattering dust. Me, I just like to say it as I remember it. And sometimes you have to explain the story. Sometimes the explanation lies… Read More ›
‘Deliver us from Evil’: A Review of Tope Folarin’s ‘Miracle’
AiW Guest Gbemisola Abiola. Tope Folarin’s Miracle depicts the prevailing belief in Christian supernaturalism, and the apparent promise of prosperity it holds for the African adherent, as the means of achieving success in the Diasporas. While the story is set in… Read More ›
Blogging the Caine Prize: Tope Folarin’s ‘Miracle’
There were moments in Tope Folarin’s ‘Miracle’ where I found myself part of a sweaty crowd in a packed church, as the pastor says ‘let us pray’, the ‘tinny Nigerian gospel music’ rings out, and prayer commences with ‘sweating and… Read More ›
Perhaps you missed…
Spotted around the web: short stories, novels and debate. Bakwa magazine: Why does the West ignore intellectual property when Africa is concerned? What does the New York Times really know about music in Africa? Can hip-hop save an artist’s life?, Fashion:… Read More ›