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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 much acclaim. (I wrote about five aspects I loved about The Old Drift.) Serpell also regularly publishes essays such as “The Banality of Empathy” or “Beauty Tips From My Dead Sister“. We talked about crossing genres, writing diverse female experiences, mosquitos, re-evaluating history, and why empathy is not everything. This episode was recorded during the African Book…
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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 Gonna Come (2018). One of his essays (“The Good Bisexual”) is included in the upcoming book Safe: On Black British Men Reclaiming Space (ed. Eric Osuwu). His “future blues” band BBXO released its first singles last year and already garnered a good amount of praise. If you want to follow and support his work, you can check out his…