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

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,...
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

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...
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

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

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...
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,...

LAST MONTH...

Tarius Montayj Jones | Pain

Tarius Montayj Jones -

Rais Tuluka | The Lineage Behind African Eyes

Rais Tuluka -

Scott Frost | The First Thing They Take

Scott Frost -

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

RANDOM CONVERSATIONS

Akin Adesokan: The Endurance of a Literary Culture

Akin Adesokan is unbreakable. This mild-mannered leviathan of letters...

Harry Garuba: In Praise of “the Thursday People”

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

Toni Kan Onwordi: Writing is profitable if you know how

Toni Kan Onwordi, better known simply as Toni Kan,...

Anezi Okoro: Celebrating the Master Story Teller in Enugu

Enugu had not quite witnessed a literary event of...

Prof. Monica Mweseli: Okot P’bitek’s Call Still Relevant to All African Writers

Political turbulence following Idi Amin’s 1971 coup in Uganda...

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

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

Nnedi Okorafor: I just have stories to tell…

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

Jesutomisin Ipinmoye: Dreaming Outwards

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

The Mystique of Maxim

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