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...
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...
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...
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

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...

LAST MONTH...

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

James Joy -

Tarius Montayj Jones | Pain

Tarius Montayj Jones -

B. Guserwa | A silent affection

B. Guserwa -

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...

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...

Nadia Ahidjo | Na Wetin Dat?

Kadi was slicing avocados for dinner when the first thing hit the roof. It was too loud to be a fruit or a branch....

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...

The Permanence of Loss | A Conversation with Ìfẹ́olúwa Àyàndélé

Ìfẹ́olúwa Àyàndélé’s debut poetry collection, My Father Paints His Dreams on My Body (2026), was published by Moon City Press at Missouri State University...

Oluwatobi Adeboyeku | The Mathematics of Passing

It is the season of first rain. Campus air—damp lecture theatres. Muddy walkways swallow up sandals. My coursemate Tola’s patience is wearing thin, like...

RANDOM CONVERSATIONS

Namwali Serpell: Planting Seeds in a Garden of Intention

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

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

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

Shadreck Chikoti: Speculative fiction is wide in its scope

Shadreck Chikoti is passionate about the development of writing...

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

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

Harry Garuba: In Praise of “the Thursday People”

Harry Garuba who passed in February 2020 was a...

Olabiyi Babalola J. Yai: Yoruba Studies Expert and Polymath

Olabiyi Babalola Yai, linguist, cultural critic, philosopher, Yoruba studies...

Gender in African Literature Today: A Conversation with Asante Lucy Mtenje

Asante Lucy Mtenje is a Malawian academic, creative writer,...

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...