The Next Generation: Special Issues

The platform, founded and edited by the Kenyan writer, is building a conversation between Africa and the Black diaspora. It is his second venture after the defunct Enkare Review.

“I needed to write something that takes advantage of the rich nuances in my own culture,” said the Graywolf Press Africa Prize-winning author of The House of Rust.

The author of the short story collection If You Keep Digging on activism, the social power of literature, and South Africa’s need for change.

The prize-winning Nigerian poet and co-founder of A Long House magazine honed his craft in the quiet, and then we heard his pathbreaking voice.

For many writers and artists in the continent, the Motswana shaman, poet, scriptwriter, editor, and interviewer is a go-to for deep conversations. What she does is “about consciousness,” going “into the realm of memory.”

The Nigerian author of Prince of Monkeys on why rap is “worthy of creative theft by contemporary writers,” and how “the exploits of young writers allow younger writers to dream bigger.”

The author of the National Book Critics Circle Award-nominated poetry collection The Rinehart Frames wants “an expansion in terms of how we speak of African literature.”

The writer and editor, working from Nigeria, has seen his groundbreaking work with the anthology Dominion earn major acclaim in the US and the UK, including becoming the first Africa-born Black writer to earn a Hugo Award nomination.

The Future Award Africa Prize-winning Nigerian poet and author of the collection In the Nude on “the book as an interface for the soul” and their literary, musical, and cinematic influences.

The professor of English and Whiting Award-winning author of the story collection Walking on Cowrie Shells talks her eclectic interests and “containing multitudes.”

“It’s not just about developing platforms for African poets. What is the bigger picture?” asks the Nigerian poet and editor of the collective. “We are thinking of training, models that feed capacity, that enhance their craft and careers.”

The editor of Doek!, author of The Eternal Audience of One, and Commonwealth Prize winner is leading a charge to place his country on the literary map.

The Future Award Africa Prize-nominated co-founder on the business of bookselling.

The Nigerian novelist, author of David Mogo, Godhunter and Son of the Storm, on epic fantasy, Black male representation in fiction, and making a literary career as a Nigerian.

The lawyer and the doctor on podcasting, documenting South Africa’s Black voices, and getting African literature its own due.

Originally planned for December 2021, to mark our first anniversary, our first special issue, for April 2022, profiles 16 African writers and curators who have impacted, disrupted, reshaped, and even created literary culture in the last five years. This landmark moment comes in two Parts, with two covers.

From the streets of Benin City to The New Yorker, a young working-class Nigerian writer scaled obstacles and became a defining voice in African poetry.