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 histories of older people of African descent living in the UK, elements of the creation and co-curation of that wider project – a photography exhibition, a long table panel, a poetry film screening, and an oral history workshop that ran throughout 2021 – are evident throughout. Highlighting the significance of joinedness, kin, and fellowship, this ..read more

Just under a week to go, with the last chance saloon doors swinging, we are dipping in to our archives: this AiW #PastAndPresent post may look back but has our sights set firmly forward to the Digital Festival Day (04 Feb) of the inaugural International Black Speculative Writing Festival weekender –– at Goldsmiths University in London, from the 2nd – 4th Feb 2024. Because the in-person Festival — 3 days celebrating African and African diasporic spec fic writing — is London-based, organisers are running a Digital day-long edition on the Sunday 4th Feb, with priority bookings for people who can ..read more

AiW Guests: Maureen Masamba, Azafi Omoluabi, Goretti Kyomuhendo, and Mutesi Gasana, with Jessica Powers. AiW note: The first week of December is #ReadingAfricaWeek, an initiative started by US and South Africa-based indie publishers Catalyst Press in 2017, as an annual celebration of African literature. 2023 is #ReadingAfrica’s 7th event – see this link (and more below) for how to join the readfest, as well as for information on what’s happening this year and to register for the remaining panels (7th and 8th December)… As part of this year’s #ReadingAfricaWeek, in the second part of thi ..read more

AiW note: With thanks to Catalyst Press who have worked with us to bring you this twinned Q&A… “With increasing global focus on African writing, this new initiative aims to open networks on the continent and to get African writing into more readers’ hands across African countries and globally.” For Immediate Release – Book Rights Trading In African Content At The Nairobi International Book Fair For The First Time.eKitabu.com/news, September 25, 2023 In September 2023, eKitabu, a Nairobi-based organisation that develops, adapts, publishes, and distributes African content, sponsored twel ..read more

AiW note: With thanks to Catalyst Press who have worked with us to bring you this twinned Q&A… “With increasing global focus on African writing, this new initiative aims to open networks on the continent and to get African writing into more readers’ hands across African countries and globally.” For Immediate Release – Book Rights Trading In African Content At The Nairobi International Book Fair For The First Time.eKitabu.com/news, September 25, 2023 This is a twinned “Words on… Q&A”, a response post to the same set of questions asked of eKitabu, a Nairobi-based organisation that de ..read more

AiW Guest: Ademola Adesola. Ademola with his copy of Akande’s novel Lola Akande’s latest novel, The Truth about Sadia (Tunmike Publishers, 2023), follows Sadia Onaolapo Oyelowo’s journey from childhood to adulthood. Set in a recognizable Lagos, Nigeria, so crucial is Sadia to the novel that every “truth” it relates, every misfortune in any of the other characters’ experience, stems from their connection to her.  As well as Sadia’s positioning, perhaps equally central to this novel’s explorations of its characters’ interconnections is the city setting. The narrative unfolds within the la ..read more

AiW note: Today is the last in our series of twinned Caine Prize shortlist 2023 interviews we have been running through the week. A month ago yesterday, on the 2nd October, Senegalese entrant, ‘A Soul of Small Places’ , by husband and wife duo Woppa Diallo & Mame Bougouma Diene, was announced as the winning story for this, the 24th iteration of the Prize. We’ve run this series in duos because, following on from last year’s coverage, we wanted to continue to highlight the less visible avenues and labour involved in literary prizes and open up some of the connections between writing, publish ..read more

AiW note: Today marks the last day in the series of twinned Caine Prize shortlist 2023 interviews we have been running through the week. A month ago yesterday, on the 2nd October, Senegalese entrant Woppa Diallo & Mame Bougouma Diene’s ‘A Soul of Small Places’ was announced as the winning story for this, the 24th iteration of the Prize. Today, we hear from Caine Prize judge, Jendella Benson, who talks about being on the panel, the enjoyable negotiations and the inevitable “little heartbreaks” of the shortlisting process (joining with fellow judging panelist Kadija George Sesay’s Q&A fr ..read more

AiW note: The penultimate day in our continuing Words on… Q&A series this week – a range of interviews around the UK-based short story award, the Caine Prize for African Writing, 2023 – sees writer Tlotlo Tsamaase (Botswana) talk with us about her shortlisted story, ‘Peeling Time (Deluxe Edition)’ . In the lead up to this year’s prize-giving – in a change of season for 2023, from early July to Monday 2nd October – we spoke with shortlisted story writers, with judges who determined that list, and, as with our coverage of the Prize last year, with publishers of their stories. A series of “tw ..read more

AiW note: This is the penultimate day in our continuing Words on… Q&A series this week, a range of interviews around the shortlist for UK-based short story award, the Caine Prize for African Writing, 2023. In the lead up to this year’s prize-giving – in a change of season for 2023, from early July to Monday 2nd October – we spoke with writers of stories that were shortlisted for the Prize, with judges who determined that list, and, following on from our coverage of the Prize last year, with publishers of the shortlisted stories. A series of “twinned” Caine Prize shortlist 2023 Q&As hav ..read more