Africa in Dialogue ~ Second Issue: Interview Series
Africa in Dialogue ~ Second Issue
Interview Series
Meet the Interviewee & Interviewers
First published in 1988, Nervous Conditions has the distinction of being the first English language novel to be written by a Zimbabwean woman of African descent. Nervous Conditions won the 1989 Commonwealth Writers Prize and remains a household name for many people. In May this year, BBC Culture asked writers to pick stories that have shaped the world and stood the test of time. Nervous Conditions ranked 66th in this list.
Readers across Africa will join Tariro Ndoro in a meditation of what Nervous Conditions means to them.
Tariro Ndoro is a Zimbabwean writer. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in a wide range of literary magazines and journals including Afreada, The Kalahari Review, Kotaz, New Contrast, Oxford Poetry and Puerto del Sol. Links to all her published works are available on her blog. Tariro was longlisted for the 2017 Writivism Short Story Prize and took part in a Digital Art Exchange Programme in 2017. She was shortlisted for the 2018 BNPA.
Sade Shoalane is an emerging experimental artist living and working in Oodi, Botswana. The young artistic survivor of childhood sexual abuse works with found material and fabrics, exploring poignant subthemes like sexual reproductive health rights, culture and self-healing.
Since 2010, she has studied and worked in the field of communications; from pursuing a degree in Media Studies at the University of Botswana [UB], teaching young children visual art to coordinating art events. She quickly got disillusioned by the tyranny of colonialism masked as academia. So in order to probe a more lateral approach to the exchanging of ideas, Sade dropped out of varsity in 2016, to pursue an auspicious art career. She is a member of Thapong Visual Art Centre and regularly exhibits at independent art shows around the capital city, Gaborone. In 2017, she won the prize for Young Artist of the Year at the annual Thapong Artist of the Year Awards [TAYA].
Sade Shoalane generates art that leans towards aesthetic vulgarity. This is a deliberate decision to promote an unfettered ideology that embraces otherness in the arts.
Bhagwan is a Zimbabwe born unpublished writer who despises words. His background is split between his home country and Botswana where sounds began to take form through him bringing about vivid stories filled with sexually inspired insights and some occasional stoicism. The experiments he has conducted have been a fruitful source of that which is beyond information, interpretations and ultimately duality. He has also unofficially shared poems and short stories with people and engaged in sharpening criticism to keep grounded. When not writing you will find him up a tree or with his dog learning not to talk.
Lusi Mbira is a Kenyan Erotica author, based in Nairobi. He has four working titles to his name, yet to be published within the year by Libros Agency Kenya. He’s a photographer and IT expert by training. Writing and photography are the embers of his passion.
Giovanni Patrick is the founder of Libros Agency Kenya Limited and a budding author based in Nanyuki Kenya, with one title under a pseudo name and another in the works. When he is not working on matters of Libros, he spends time with his lovely wife, son, two dogs and two cats on the deck, with a book in hand or a spatula next to barbecue on the grill.
Adebayo Kolawole Samuel, a graduate of Agricultural Extension and Communication Technology from the prestigious Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA), Ondo State, Nigeria. He is a young Nigerian poet and gospel artiste who writes his poetry from Akure, a gentle city without flyovers, in South-Western Nigeria. His poems, which he satirically calls “children from an intercourse with life” have appeared in the BPPC Anthology, WRR, Parousia Magazine, and elsewhere. He tries his hand at short stories from time to time too. And when he isn’t writing, he is most likely preaching. He is the author of PoeHEARTic, a chapbook collection of love poems.
Tọ́lá Ìjálúsì writes from Ibadan, Nigeria. He is a Creative Writer, Poet, and Reviewer. His works appears on various online journals and magazine such as Kalahari Review, Dissident Voice, Indian Periodical, New Ink Review, BlackBoy Magazine and elsewhere. His poems were published in anthologies such as Peace Is Possible, Muse For World Peace II, The Sun Will Rise Again, Best New African Poets Anthology 2016 and Best New African Poets Anthology 2017. He was a recipient of PIN Excellence Award 2016. He is the Managing Editor of PAROUSIA Magazine, An Online Christian Arts and Literary Magazine.
Dr. Jama Musse Jama is an Ethno-Mathematician and author known for his notable work on traditional Somali board games and other African indigenous knowledge to improve education and development in Africa. He is the founder of the Redsea Cultural Foundation, the organisation behind the Hargeysa International Book Fair, which has become one of the most important literary gatherings and book celebrations in East Africa. He is also the Managing Director for the Hargeysa Cultural Centre in Somaliland.
Anike Bello is the founder of Ọ̀rọ̀ Àníké. She is a London raised Yoruban with a keen interest in people, mobility, spaces and heritage. Her writing has been featured in publications including Media Diversified, The Black Expat, Checkout Africa, and she has collaborated with brands including the Centre of Pan African Thought and POSTSCRIPT to hold discussions about culture and ancestral wisdom.
Oris Aigbokhaevbolo is a writer and critic living in Lagos, Nigeria. He holds a Doctor of Pharmacy degree from the University of Benin, and has attended Academies for Film Criticism in Germany, South Africa and the Netherlands. In 2015, Oris mentored film critics at the Durban International Film Festival. In the same year, he became the first winner of the All Africa Music Awards prize for Music Journalism. He is the West African editor for Music in Africa, and his works have appeared in Chimurenga, BellaNaija, This is Africa, The Africa Report, Catapult and the Guardian UK.
Jennifer Chinenye Emelife writes fiction, nonfiction and poetry. In 2016, she participated in the Writivism Creative Nonfiction Workshop in Accra and the Short Story Day Africa Flow Workshop in Lagos. She’s co-founder and lead correspondent at Praxis Magazine for Arts and Literature.
Wilson Nguni is a painter and writer from Botswana. He is a maestro whose art reflects art today and has frozen moments of the day to day African life in all forms. He says, Botswana art lies on the bristle of mu brush. Since I am insufficient in religion, the art of painting is my destiny. I live to do three things: to fall in love, to paint, and to eat all the chicken I come across.
Kearoma Mido Mosata is a Motswana writer and blogger. She was shortlisted for the inaugural BSHD Tourism Fiction Award in 2016. Her work appears in print in 36 Kisses and Other Short Stories & Poems and as part of It’s The Devil You Know- Collection of Works on Gender Based Violence. More of her works are online on Brittle Paper, Kalahari Review and Arts & Africa. Kearoma writes about a lot of things but lately, her writing has been inspired by the idea of displacement, the self and home. Her first Non-fictional short story “This Is How We Grieve” is part of the recently published 3rd Journal of The Single Story Foundation.
TJ Benson is author of ‘We Won’t Fade into Darkness’, a collection of short stories that explores the fate of an abusive father, an Ogbanje in a near post-apocalyptic Nigeria and more. His short story ‘An Abundance of Yellow Paper’ was the joint winner of the Amb-HBF contest in 2016. He was the first runner-up for the 2016 Short story Day Africa Prize themed ‘Migration’, and he is a two-time writer-in-residence at the Edebi Writers Residency Nigeria.
Ope Adedeji dreams about bridging the gender equality gap. She is a lawyer, writer and editor. She is an alumni of the 2018 Purple Hibiscus Trust Creative Writing Workshop. If you do not find her reading, you’ll find her writing.
Imade Iyamu is a young writer from Lagos, Nigeria. She has been longlisted for the Nommo Award 2017 (nominated by the African Speculative Fiction Society) and recently won the Awele Creative Trust Award 2017. Her work has also been published in Wolves Magazine, Afreada, the International Women’s Day Anthology of Praxis Magazine and was featured in the ‘Dearly Beloved’ Anthology of Zoetic Press.
Tolulope Oke is an introvert, an art enthusiast, an entrepreneur, a nyctophilia and a fellow of progress. Tolulope studied English at the University of Ibadan, Ibadan where he recently completed his M.A. degree. He is the Publisher of Lunaris Review: a journal of art and the literary, Fiction Editor at Parentheses Journal, and an Editor at Africa in Dialogue. Tolulope lives in Ibadan where he is comforted by her hills and their bliss.
Keletso Mopai is a South African storyteller who was born andraised in Lenyenye township, Limpopo. Her stories appear in highlyregarded publications including The Johannesburg Review of Books,DRUM, Omenana Magazine, Brittle Paper, The Kalahari Review and The Ebedi Review. She was shortlisted for the 2017 Writivism Prize and was a finalist for the 2018 Africa Book Club Competition. She is the author of If You Keep Digging
Abu Amirah is a Mombasa-based writer, and a student of Psychology. He was shortlisted for the Writivism 2016 short story prize and was mentored by Yewande Omotoso during the Writivism online mentoring program ( 2017). Having attended the Miles Morland Foundation writing workshop in Bulago, he has just finished working on his first short story anthology. His piece “Rock Bottom” won the Kalahari Review Igby prize for nonfiction in October 2017 and has also been published on Munyori journal. He does the weekly column “Swahilific: Diary of a campus girl” in Mombasa’s premier lifestyle blog www.lifeinmombasa.com. He is one of the founding editors of Hekaya Initiative.
Gaamangwe Joy Mogami is a multi-passionate storyteller, literary interviewer, editor and publisher, ancestral healer and sacred gatherings curator. She is the founder of Rise the Warrior, a movement that fuses depth psychology, metaphysical sciences and African Spirituality to curate sacred gatherings, inner healing and transformation immersions for African individuals and organizations. She hosts The Joy Mogami Show, a Facebook Live stream show that holds conversations on healing and transformation with wellness experts. She is the founding editor of Africa in Dialogue.
