Fiction

Michael Barrington | A Toast to Africa

The message from the Regional Director was sparse and uncompromising—no explanations, only urgency. He should leave at once. His destination lay...
Fiction

Khosa J.K. Chambalo | Memory Lane

The red earth of Malawi does not forget the footprints of its children. Even when the rain washes the surface clean,...
Fiction

Yagazie Chinekotam | The Old High Gate Hotel

The set of apartments sat like the last twelve cubes in a St. Louis sugar box. I could smell the aroma of...
Poetry

Abigail George | Black Vulnerability, Black Stigma

Black vulnerability, black stigma There's a swamp in his breath, swampy breathvolcanic ash in his pink nostrils, dragonThe red light from the...
Poetry

Cliff Burns | First Meeting

First Meeting You are the Otherbut from your pointof view so am I Inside Schrodinger’s Boxstaring at each otheruncertain what happens next Tribal peoplemeeting...
Essays & Reviews

‘Shèun Ominira-Bluejack | “Uneasy Lies The Head”

“I am an African! I owe my being to the hills and the valleys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers,...
Poetry

Newpanther | Chapter 9

Chapter 9 yesterdays agoI saw long haired hippies in black and whitereligious groupies squatting everywheretelling fortunes under Shaman trancedrop a bit of...
Poetry

Mark de Klerk | Playing Golf with Nelson Mandela

Playing Golf with Nelson Mandela Once again, I am in the roughfeeling inferior to the guy behind mewho keeps hitting holes-in-one.After a...

LAST MONTH...

Abigail George | Old Brown Sherry lullaby

Abigail George -

James Joy | How I Met My Kitten’s Father, and Other Lessons in Love

James Joy -

The Permanence of Loss | A Conversation with Ìfẹ́olúwa Àyàndélé

Kayode Odumboni -

Samuel Kozah | Facing West

West is the first fact of me. I have faced it for eighty years. My world is curved. The earth presses against my round edge...

Rais Tuluka | The Lineage Behind African Eyes

I have begun this essay eight times and deleted it eight times. I keep seeing your eyes, which are also the eyes of my...

B. Guserwa | A silent affection

My old man loves his wife, but you would never know it. You wouldn’t know it from the way he never says her name, from...

Scott Frost | The First Thing They Take

The First Thing They Take I. before you learn your kradinis the first thing they take.not gently--nothing sort of exciting--but like a tax, they takeeven though...

Tarius Montayj Jones | Pain

“Pain” It comes every year, like the passing of tradition;there is no February’s leap year,nor is there any grey area in betweento separate Black from...

J.L. Oputa | Room IV

I Trepidation : A feeling of alarm or dread. The first time you came across this word was in your primary school classroom. Mrs. Essien, your...

RANDOM CONVERSATIONS

Jesutomisin Ipinmoye: Dreaming Outwards

A while back, African Writer Magazine published this great...

H.R. ole Kulet: Education Should Strengthen the Bonds Created by Culture

Henry ole Kulet grew up in a village called...

“The artist is a person at a crossroads” – Francis B. Nyamnjoh

Cameroonian Scholar Francis B. Nyamnjoh on Art, Academia, indebtedness,...

The Mystique of Maxim

(for Uzor Maxim Uzoatu, Boroja I, Obi of Ikate,...

Namwali Serpell: Planting Seeds in a Garden of Intention

Namwali Serpell. Born in Lusaka, Zambia. The ethereal forms...

Uzor Maxim Uzoatu: The Legend of Ben Tomoloju

The arts scene of Lagos, nay Nigeria, owes a...

Titilope Sonuga: I believe in truth-telling as a pathway to healing

Títílopẹ́ Sónúgà (she writes it as “Titilope Sonuga”) is...

Ogaga Ifowodo: Slipping a Stone in the Sling of Prose and Poetry

The name Ogaga Ifowodo, PhD., is familiar to many,...

Naipanoi Lepapa: I needed to be a poet to save myself…

Naipanoi Lepapa is a journalist and poet. Her evolving...