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...

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...

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...

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,...

‘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,...

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...

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...

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...

LAST MONTH...

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...

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

Our neighbour's stray cat is a patchwork of colors: white fur coat broken by a round grey spot on her back, and pointy orange...

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...

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...

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

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

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

The Mystique of Maxim

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

Olabiyi Babalola J. Yai: Yoruba Studies Expert and Polymath

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

Harry Garuba: In Praise of “the Thursday People”

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

Uwem Akpan: On Bullets, Bestsellers and Bedbugs

Uwem Akpan In conversation with Sola Osofisan. In 2008, Uwem...

Akin Adesokan: The Endurance of a Literary Culture

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

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

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

Namwali Serpell: Planting Seeds in a Garden of Intention

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

Shadreck Chikoti: Speculative fiction is wide in its scope

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