Features

At 91, the Catholic prelate is the most accomplished living African and Black religious minister, our oldest cover star, and our first outside literature and film.

There is no literary bookstore in Africa’s oldest modern country. But, after civil wars and an epidemic, its writers are writing, and hoping.

Created by the Nigerian artists Vetum Galadima and Amaka Obioma, with sponsorship by Africa No Filter, it “combines museum technology and art direction to create a perspective for art preservation.”

Crafted by the Nigerian designer Izuchukwu Udokwu, with sponsorship by Africa No Filter, it weaves fashion, music, and poetry to show that “you don’t have to create physical pieces that would probably end up in the waste bin and contribute to the wastes in our environment.”

For the Nigerian novelist, women’s lives are the plot. With Tomorrow I Become a Woman and We Were Girls Once, the first two books in a planned cross-generational trilogy, she takes us into the burdens of marriage, motherhood, ethnicity, and class.

The Nigerian poet and editor of Agbowo’s “searing” The Years of Blood has “vivid, unsettling imagery drawing on Yoruba cosmology and folklore.” It is forthcoming in Fall 2025.

Having traversed regions, her poetry, including the Forward Prize-winning Bad Diaspora Poems, interrogates a race- and class-conscious world — and her place in it as a Muslim Somali woman.

Booker Prize winner Ben Okri, author of The Famished Road, and Ghanaian rapper Delasi, with the EP The Audacity of Free Thought, in a deep, rare reflection on storytelling, art forms, and their quests for origins.

In Exodus, his debut collection, ‘Gbenga Adeoba threads the histories, migrations, and traumas of people forced to sea.

Hopping between genres, his scores are heard in almost every major recent box office and streaming success, including A Tribe Called Judah, Jagun Jagun, Gangs of Lagos, and Battle on Buka Street. “I’ve been trusted by filmmakers,” he said.

On his debut album Diary of a Loverboy, the Nigerian singer and actor channels frustration, anger, and love.

Editors Daniel Orubo and OluTimehin Kukoyi, and contributors Olakunle Ologunro, Innocent Ilo, Edwin Okolo, Fareeda Abdulkareem, and Ani Kayode, on the freedoms and radicality of fictionalizing happiness for LGBTQ+ Nigerians.

As war rages in Sudan, we turn to one of its major artists, a pioneering figure in the 2000s resurgence in African literature.

In five years, Chess in Slums Africa brought hope to thousands of children and became a charity phenomenon. But to get there, its founder Tunde Onakoya had to survive terrors: “It’s the kind of things that you see in movies, and you’re, like, ‘This is really bad,’ but then you’re seeing it, the real consequences of poverty.”

In their debut novel-in-stories Vagabonds!, the Nigerian writer and visual artist pursues an alternate reality of their mind, taking on, among other subjects, social normalcy, gender, and queerness.

The Ghanaian American author of What Napoleon Could Not Do, a summer reading pick by Barack Obama, has been thinking about art in our contemporary times.

Director, producer, and screenplay writer Ebuka Njoku and producer Lorenzo Menakaya on their professional journeys and the making of their Netflix No. 1 hit.

Headlined by a quartet of feted veteran voices in Wole Soyinka, Aminatta Forna, Jennifer Makumbi, and Chris Abani, NYU Accra’s 30-author symposium is a convergence of inspiration. “We have to tell our own story,” said convener and school director Chike Frankie Edozien.

The $6,000 initiative, sponsored by Africa No Filter, will fund and support five projects representing West, East, and Southern Africa: a musical and art exhibition, 3D fashion and storytelling, a mixed media project on Nok terracotta, a podcast on LGBTQI+ issues, and a documentary on Nollywood.

The manuscript in progress has been acquired by Scribner in the US and W&N in the UK.