Conversations

When Oris Aigbokhaevbolo declared Nigerian literature dead, he did not do so casually. He was not lamenting a temporary lull or the disappearance of a few magazines. He was naming what he saw as a fundamental failure of formation. There was, in his account, no stable literary life to grow into. Writing appeared intensely, briefly, […]

Efe Paul Azino is the Director of the Lagos International Poetry Festival, now in its tenth year. He is a spoken-word poet and writer. He is also the founder of a new literature festival based in New York City. In this conversation, we discuss the new New York Black & African Literature Festival happening between […]

In February 2024, we sat with Nobel Laureate Wọlé Ṣóyínká as part of the production of Ebrohimie Road: A Museum of Memory — a documentary biopic that examines a location at the University of Ìbàdàn where he lived briefly when he was appointed as the first Nigerian Head of the School of Drama. It was […]

Going to the university for the first time in the harmattan semester of 1991-92, I first realised how influential Ngugi wa Thiong’o was in the Nigerian literary and dramatic spheres. Pen Point, the only independent student bulletin with which I would occasionally publish, had been named after a similar publication edited by Ngugi in the […]

Agbarha-Otor is a short drive, twenty minutes at the most, from Ughelli, one of 24 communities that make up the Urhobo ethnic nationality, and also functions as the administrative headquarters of Ughelli North LGA in Delta State. The coordinates, for those interested: 5°53′N 6°06′E. I found a commercial bike rider willing to take me from […]

Following a milestone achievement for Mauritanian literature, Ibrahim Fawzy interviews novelist and journalist Ahmed Vall Dine. His novel, Danishmand, has secured a coveted spot on the 2025 International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) shortlist, making Vall Dine the first writer from Mauritania to reach this stage since the prize was inaugurated in 2007. Danishmand is […]