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

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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...

LAST MONTH...

Scott Frost | The First Thing They Take

Scott Frost -

Rais Tuluka | The Lineage Behind African Eyes

Rais Tuluka -

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

James Joy -

Brian Obiri-Asare | in pure moonlight

in pure moonlight +++over at the chop bar, where they’re still palavering & holding onto the promise of this world, her sighs return +++from the abyss...

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...

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...

Abigail George | Old Brown Sherry lullaby

He beat her black and blue when he was drunk (or) Old Brown Sherry lullaby On Friday nights, we would go to Spur and order steak,well-done. His...

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...

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...

RANDOM CONVERSATIONS

Nnedi Okorafor: I just have stories to tell…

Nnedi Okorafor is an important writer, period. She is...

E.C. Osondu: A Writer must come to the blank page with humility

E.C. Osondu is the author of Voice of America...

Namwali Serpell: Planting Seeds in a Garden of Intention

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

Nengi Ilagha: Words are the instruments of our warfare in the spirit, as in the flesh

NENGI JOSEF OWEI-ILAGHA, fondly called Pope Pen the First,...

Jesutomisin Ipinmoye: Dreaming Outwards

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

Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún: Renaissance is Badly Needed in African Language Literature

36-year-old Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún is a poet, blogger, linguist and...

Playing with Poetry: A Conversation with Tade Ipadeola

"I do think that our greatest investments should be...

“My repression is as legitimate as your freedom”: A Conversation with Yẹ́misí Aríbisálà

Yẹ́misí Aríbisálà, formerly Yẹ́misí Ogbe, is a food memoirist...

Ali Znaidi: A poem is a kind of selfie captured in words

Ali Znaidi is a widely anthologised writer. A Tunisian...