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Podcast #3: Namwali Serpell
Namwali Serpell is an award-winning author and associate professor of English at UC Berkeley. Her first published story, “Muzungu,” was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2009, shortlisted for the 2010 Caine Prize. Five years later she won the Caine Prize with her story „The Sack“. Her debut novel, The Old Drift, was published in March to…
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April, May, June: 15(+) Most-Anticipated Books
The first quarter of 2019 is almost over and it is time to look into the next three month. There are so many fascinating books coming out – some by already well-loved authors and also super-interesting debuts. I share brief descriptions of each book (either from Goodreads or the publisher’s page, sometimes abridged)…
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5 Reasons Why I Loved Namwali Serpell’s The Old Drift
In 2009, Namwali Serpell’s short story “Muzungu” published in Callaloo was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2009 and a year later it was shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing (a prize she would go on winning five years later). Now, this story – reworked – sits in the middle of Serpell’s…
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“All the ghosts of life/ assemble before us”
This March started with a bang for poetry. On the first day of the month, University Press of Nebraska published Tjawangwa Dema’s debut collection The Careless Seamstress and Mahtem Shiferraw’s sophomore collection Your Body is War as part of the African Poetry Book Series. Both poets are deeply invested in interrogating the ways women experience…
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The Great White Feminist Novel
On November 28th, Margaret Atwood wrote a tweet which excited many. Thirty years after the publications of her seminal dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale (and during its successful run as a TV series), Atwood announced that she was writing a sequel: The Testaments will be published in September this year. It seems to be a good time for…
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Podcast #2: Musa Okwonga
Musa Okwonga is a poet, essayist, journalist, writer, and musician. His writing has appeared in several outlets. He has published two books on football – A Cultured Left Foot (2007) and Will You Manage? (2010) – as well as a poetry collection (Eating Roses for Dinner). Okwonga contributed to award-winning anthologies like The Good Immigrant (2016) and Change…
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Contemporary Queer Nigerian Writing
Over the last couple of years, I accumulated a fair amount of books (texts) from Nigeria/ by Nigerian and Nigerian diasporic authors which tackle queer themes and focus on LGBT+ protagonists. This list brings them together in one post. It is not to supposed to be a complete representation of everything ever published.…
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Is it really a difficult read?
When Anna Burns’ novel Milkman won the Man Booker Prize last year the tone it would be talked about in the coming months was set at the ceremony. Kwame Anthony Appiah, the head of the jury, called the book “challenging” and went on: “I spend my time reading articles in the Journal of…
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Podcast #1: Sharon Dodua Otoo
Sharon Dodua Otoo describes herself as “Black British mother, activist, author and editor”. She has published two novellas in English, the things i am thinking while smiling politely (2012) and Synchronicity (2014), and is the editor of the English-language book series Witnessed which focusses on the experiences of Black people in Germany. In…
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January, February, March: 15(+) Most-Anticipated Books
While I am aware that January is almost over I decided nonetheless to share some of the books published in the first quarter of 2019 I can’t await to read. I share brief descriptions of the book (either from Goodreads or the publisher’s page, sometimes abridged) and in a few words why I…
