Borders Literature Online

Africanist & Global

January 28, 2022
Uwem Akpan

Uwem Akpan

Uwem Akpan's collection of short stories, Say You're One of Them, was published in 2008 by Little, Brown, after a protracted auction. It made the "Best of the Year" list at People magazine, Wall Street Journal, and other places. The New York Times made it the Editor's Choice, and Entertainment Weekly listed it at # 27 in their Best of the Decade. Say You're One of Them won the Commonwealth Prize (Africa Region), the pen Open Book Award, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. It was the 2009 Oprah Book Club selection. A New York Times #1 bestseller, it has been translated into 14 languages.

His second book and first novel, New York, My Village, was published in November 2021 by WW Norton. It was the Pick of the Month for November 2021 at the Strand Bookstore, First Editions Club selection for December 2021 at the Greenlight Bookstore, and Editor's Pick for November 2021 at Amazon. Oprah magazine selected it as a 2021 favourite. Uwem has been a Fellow at the Black Mountain Institute (University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2010), Institute for the Humanities (University of Michigan, 2011), Yaddo Foundation (Saratoga Springs, New York, 2012), the Cullman Center (the New York Public Library, 2013) and the Hank center for Catholic Intellectual Heritage (Loyola University Chicago, 2017). Uwem teaches in the University of Florida's MFA Program.

 Interview
January 04, 2021
Folu Agoi

Folu Agoi

Folu Agoi is the President of the Nigerian Centre of PEN International (PEN Nigeria). He has also served as Chairman of the Association of Nigerian Authors, ANA, Lagos Branch (March 13, 2004 - October 13, 2007). Interview
January 04, 2021
Jama Musse Jama

Jama Musse Jama

Jama Musse Jama is a prominent ethno-mathematician based in Somaliland. A prolific author and scholar of the humanities, Jama is importantly, the founder of Hargeysa International Book Fair. Interview
December 17, 2019
Hakim Adi

Hakim Adi

Dr. Hakim Adi is the first history professor of African heritage in the United Kingdom. Specializing in African affairs, he has written widely on Pan-Africanism and the modern political history of Africa and the African diaspora. Interview
December 17, 2019
Elliot Agyare

Elliot Agyare

Elliot Agyare is Chief Executive Officer of Smartline Publishers, a leading publisher in Ghana. He is also the Immediate President of Ghana Publishers Association. He previously served as a member of the Oversight Committee of the Ghana Private Sector Development Strategy, the Board of the Ghana Book Development Council and the Minister of Education's Advisory Council. Agyare is currently President of the Commonwealth Book Publishers Association. Interview
October 04, 2019
Gbadega Adedapo

Gbadega Adedapo

Adedapo Gbadega is currently President of Nigeria Publishers Association. Also, President and Chief Executive Officer of Rasmed Publishers Limited. Following the acquisition of Rasmed in 1996, Adedapo ran the Publishing firm ever since, and has made it a pace setter in the publishing industry of Nigerian Educational Sector.

Since being appointed CEO in 1996, Adedapo has led the transformation of Rasmed Publishers Limited from a traditional print publishing company focused only on English language publishing, to a dynamic print and digital publisher with broad expertise in foreign language publishing and more than $1.5M in digital revenues yearly. The publishing firm now boost of over 200 employees who are dedicated to the success of the publishing firm.

Adedapo.S. Gbadega holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and Statistics (B.SC.) from the renowned Ogun State University now known as Olabisi Onabanjo University. He also holds a master's degree in Business Administration (M.B.A) from the prestigious Obafemi Awolowo University. Adedapo has also attended and completed various management courses within and outside Nigeria.
 Interview
September 25, 2019
Gill Moodie

Gill Moodie

Gill Moodie is a commissioning editor at NB Publishers, South Africa's largest trade publisher based in Cape Town. Her top-selling publications span investigative and narrative journalism, business, biography and current affairs. As publisher at the Tafelberg Imprint, in addition to The President's Keepers, she has published Steinheist by Rob Rose, Gang Town by Don Pinnock, Faith & Courage by Thabo Makgoba and others. Gill Moodie additionally has published her own website: Grubstreet.co.za which offers media intelligence on the South African media ' old and new. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (B.A) in English, Classical Civilisation.
 Interview
July 04, 2019
Emmanuel Iduma

Emmanuel Iduma

Emmanuel Iduma is a writer of fiction and nonfiction. Born and raised in Nigeria, he has contributed essays and stories to journals, magazines, artists' books, and exhibition catalogues. He is the author of The Sound of Things to Come (first published as Farad in Nigeria), and received a 2017 Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation grant in arts writing, for his blog A Sum of Encounters. He is a faculty member at the School of Visual Arts, where he obtained an MFA in Art Criticism and Writing. In 2017, he was associate curator of the Nigerian pavilion at the Venice Biennale. He is the author, most recently, of A Stranger's Pose. Interview
January 01, 2019
Leila Aboulela

Leila Aboulela

Leila Aboulela is a Sudanese-born writer whose work, written in English, has received critical acclaim and a high profile for its distinctive exploration of identity, migration and Islamic spirituality. Highlighting the challenges facing Muslims in Europe and telling the stories of flawed complex characters who struggle to make choices using Muslim logic', Aboulela's work explores significant political issues. Her personal faith and the move, in her mid-twenties, from Sudan to Scotland are a major influence on her work. Literary influences include Arab authors Tayeb Salih and Naguib Mahfouz as well as Ahdaf Soueif, Jean Rhys, Anita Desai and Doris Lessing. The Scottish literary landscape and writers such as Alan Spence and Robin Jenkins have also been influential.

Leila Aboulela's works have been included in cultural educational programs supported by the British Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities in the US. Her restrained lyricism, irony and clarity has received praise from Nobel Prize winner J.M Coetzee, Ben Okri and Ali Smith. Interview
September 15, 2018
Noo Saro Wiwa

Noo Saro Wiwa

Noo Saro-Wiwa is a British/Nigerian author. Born: 1976 (age 42 years) in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, and raised in England, Noo attended Roedean School, King's College London and Columbia University in New York.

Her first book, Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria (Granta, 2012), was selected by the Guardian newspaper as one of its 10 Best Contemporary Books on Africa in 2012.The book has been translated into French and Italian, and in 2016 it won the Albatros Travel Literature Prize in Italy.

Saro-Wiwa is the daughter of the Late Nigerian poet and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa.
 Interview
August 30, 2018
Wole Talabi

Wole Talabi

Wole Talabi is a full-time engineer, part-time writer and sometime editor from Nigeria. His stories have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction ,Omenana, Terraform, The Kalahari Review, Imagine Africa 500 anthology, and a few other places. He edited the anthologies These Words Expose Us and Lights Out: Ressurrection and co-wrote the play Color Me Man. His fiction has been nominated for several science fiction and fantasy awards. He likes scuba diving, elegant equations and oddly-shaped things. He currently lives and works in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. 'Wednesday's Story' was first published in Lightspeed Magazine (2016).
 Interview
May 11, 2018
Adewale Maja-Pearce

Adewale Maja-Pearce

Adewale Maja-Pearce is an Anglo-Nigerian writer born in 1953 and currently living in Lagos, Nigeria. He has published a number of books, including Loyalties and Other Stories, In My Father's Country, How many miles to Babylon?, A Mask Dancing, Who's Afraid of Wole Soyinka?, From Khaki to Agbada, Remembering Ken Saro-Wiwa and Other Essays, A Peculiar Tragedy, and Counting the Cost, as well as the 1998 and 1999 annual reports on human rights violations in Nigeria. He also edited The Heinemann Book of African Poetry in English, Wole Soyinka: An Appraisal, Christopher Okigbo: Collected Poems, The New Gong Book of New Nigerian Short Stories, and Dream Chasers: New Nigerian Stories. He has published essays and book reviews in Granta, London Review of Books, TLS, London Magazine, Prospect and many others. He was Africa editor of INDEX ON CENSORSHIP, the London-based magazine of free expression (1986-97). He was also former editor of the now defunct Heinemann African Writers Series (1986-94), and serves currently as editor of the Nelson Literary Series (an imprint of Evans Brothers Nigeria Ltd).

He currently runs YEMAJA, an editorial services agency. He also has a small publishing company, The New Gong: www.thenewgong.com, and maintains a blog: http://www.majapearce.blogspot.com.

He is married to Juliet Ezenwa, the artist: www.julietezenwa.com.
Interview
May 04, 2018
Jonathan Haynes

Jonathan Haynes

Jonathan Haynes is professor of English at Long Island University in Brooklyn. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he is co-author of Cinema and Social Change in West Africa and the editor of Nigerian Video Films.

Jonathan Haynes is interested in how literature, film and other arts are related to the cultures and societies that produce them. At first, English Renaissance Literature was the main focus of his studies, but then his interests shifted to Third World film and literature and African Studies. For two decades he has been closely following the growth of the Nigerian film industry, Nollywood.

He came to Long Island University's Southampton College in 1998 and to Brooklyn in 2004. In 2001-2002, he was the founding director of the West African Center of the Friends World Program (now LIU Global) in Kumasi, Ghana. He has also taught at the American University in Cairo (Egypt), Tufts University, Albion College, Bennington College, and Columbia University. He spent three years in Nigeria as a Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Nigeria-Nsukka, Ahmadu Bello University, and the University of Ibadan. He was a guest professor at the University of Cologne in Germany.

He is the author of the seminal book 'Nollywood: The Creation of Nigerian Film Genres' Interview
March 21, 2018
Abraham Oshoko

Abraham Oshoko

Abraham Oshoko is a writer, illustrator and graphic designer. He believes that there are untapped creative resources in the ancient and contemporary history of Africa, and he hopes to showcase as many of these as possible in graphic novel formats for a global audience. Abraham Oshoko is a non-partisan author who writes from the public gallery on the socio-political situation of his country, Nigeria. He lives in Lagos with his wife and daughter. The June 12 graphic novels are his first set of published works. Interview
March 03, 2018
Biyi Bandele

Biyi Bandele

Biyi Bandele (born Biyi Bandele-Thomas; 13 October 1967) is a Nigerian novelist, playwright and filmmaker. Bandele is regarded as one of the most versatile and prolific of the UK-based Nigerian writers, having turned his hand to theatre, journalism, television, film and radio, as well as the fiction with which he made his name. He lives in London, where he moved in 1990.

His plays include: Rain; Marching for Fausa (1993); Resurrections in the Season of the Longest Drought (1994); Two Horsemen (1994), selected as Best New Play at the 1994 London New Plays Festival; Death Catches the Hunter and Me and the Boys (published in one volume, 1995); and Oroonoko, an adaptation of Aphra Behn's 17th-century novel of the same name. In 1997 he did a successful dramatization of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. Brixton Stories, Bandele's stage adaptation of his own novel The Street (1999), premiered in 2001 and was published in one volume with his play Happy Birthday Mister Deka, which premiered in 1999. He also adapted Lorca's Yerma in 2001.

Biyi Bandele's novels, which include The Man Who Came in from the Back of Beyond (1991) and The Street (1999,2010), have been described as "rewarding reading, capable of wild surrealism and wit as well as political engagement." His 2007 novel, Burma Boy, reviewed in The Independent by Tony Gould, was called "a fine achievement" and lauded for providing a voice for previously unheard Africans.

His directorial debut film Half of a Yellow Sun was selected to be screened in the Special Presentation section at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival, and received a "rapturous reception". The film received a wide range of critical attention. His film, entitled Fifty, was included in the 2015 London Film Festival. He also directed the third season of the popular MTV drama series, Shuga. Interview
January 24, 2018
Lesley Lababidi

Lesley Lababidi

Lesley Lababidi is the author of Cairo's Street Stories: Exploring the City's Statues, Squares, Bridges, Gardens, and Sidewalk Caf's (AUC Press, 2008), Cairo: The Practical Guide (AUC Press,15th edition, 2012), Cairo: The Family Guide (AUC Press, 4th Edition, 2010), Silent No More Special Needs People in Egypt (AUC Press, 2002), Paddle Your Own Canoe An American Woman's Passage Into Nigeria (Spectrum Books, 1997), and Bahgory Legacy (Obelisque Publications, 2013). Her articles are found in: Obelisque Magazine, Persimmon Tree Magazine, Horus, Turath, Valerie Magazine, ARCE newsletter and various other Egyptian publications.

Lababidi's new book, a 2018 release, A Field Guide to Street Names of Central Cairo, was written jointly with renowned translator of Arabic, Dr. Humphrey Davies. The Field Guide has been critically acclaimed for its engagement with the streets of Cairo as 'a palimpsest of (Cairo's) history'. The Guide is a truly admirable feat, listing more than 500 current and 300 former street names 'with an explanation of what each name commemorates and when it was first recorded, followed by the same for its predecessors'. It possesses universal appeal: citizens of Egypt, long-term residents, visitors, in short all those who are fascinated by 'this most multi-layered of cities' will find their curiosity satisfied by this Field Guide.
 Interview