2022

We have published a lot of incredible stories this year spanning different tastes and genres in African literature. As we approach the year’s end, we have compiled a list of our top stories for 2022 strictly for your leisure reading this holiday. At the top of our list is this piece by Mọlárá Wood which […]

In this interview, Carl Terver, an essayist, poet and the founding editor of Afapinen, speaks with the 2022 NLNG Shortlistee, S’ueddie Vershima Agema, on his book, Memory and the Call of Waters. CARL TERVER It must be great to have made the NLNG Prize shortlist. Congratulations. Will you kindly tell us about your thoughts at […]

The earth’s hunger is eternal Its stomach swells with our loved ones In farewell, we make concrete beds And mound pillows… Transition (page 25) In Su’eddie Vershima Agema’s Memory and the Call of the Waters, memories are tenderness and sorrow. It is a stream of calm waters waltzing through terrains of hurt and loss. It […]

Saddiq Dzukogi is the author of Your Crib, My Qibla published under African Poetry Book Fund Series by the University of Nebraska. The book has been shortlisted for Julie Suk Award finalist and Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry shortlist in the United States. In this interview which took place in cyberscape across two continents, Peter […]

Martin Heidegger in The Origin of the Work of Art describes language as “home of being.” He also describes poetry as a form with powers to disclose “being.” Saddiq Dzukogi’s collection of poems, Your Crib, My Qibla (University of Nebraska Press, 2021), which is occasioned by the death of his daughter, Baha, wades through a […]

Romeo Oríogun is the author of A Sacrament of Bodies and Nomad, and a few other poetry chapbooks. Nomad has now been shortlisted for the 2022 Nigeria Prize for Literature (poetry category). In this conversation with OlongoAfrica, conducted over zoom by Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún and Olajide Salawu, he talks about his motivations and influences. The conversation […]

Joshua Chizoma’s “Collector of Memories” weaves the epistemological to challenge the principles of our moralities while also entangling that with personal identity. In the “Collector of Memories”, one of the shortlisted stories for the prestigious 2022 Caine Prize for African Writing, Chizoma draws us to carefully read this poignant and visceral story that questions the […]

Let us start with a confession — mine, at least: I don’t know where the poets are. Or I don’t read them because I hardly hear their names and haven’t seen their books, because no one is reviewing them in magazines or talking about them, not even at a gathering of writers drinking beer. Or […]

At an event in Lagos today, the entries for the 2022 Nigeria Prize for Literature  were handed over to the panel of judges by the Chair of the Prize’s Advisory Board, Professor Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo. Every year, the Nigeria Prize for Literature, sponsored by the Nigerian Liquified Natural Gas (NLNG) accepts a flurry of entries dedicated […]