Writing Africa Podcast

Chimeka Garricks is a lawyer, editor, and ghost copywriter. His fiction includes the acclaimed novel, Tomorrow Died Yesterday and the collection of short stories, A Broken People’s Playlist. The collection which he wrote with the aid of music while trying to avoid working on another novel is coming in June.

The Lagos-based writer shared with us why he turned to the short form to get his writing mojo back, how the Nigerian and African literary scene has changed since his last book came out ten years ago and his expectations of being a guest at the Afrolit Sans Frontieres festival currently running online.

This podcast is a part of our role as media partner of the Afrolit Sans Frontières.,

Joe Khamisi has had a long history of public service in Kenya. For many years he worked as a journalist before transitioning into civil service and then parliament. When his legislative career ended, he wrote the nonfiction titles The Politics of Betrayal: Diary of a Kenyan Legislator (2011), Dash Before Dusk: A Slave Descendant’s Journey In Freedom (2014), The Wretched Africans (2016), and Looters And Grabbers: 54 Years of Corruption and Plunder by the Elite, 1963 – 2017 (2018). His latest book The Bribery Syndrome: How Multinational Corporations Collude with Dictators to Raid Africa's Natural Resources was published in 2019.

In an in-depth interview, Khamisi shared why he had to write a book about the slavery on the East African coast, how a dysfunctional Kenyan publishing industry forced him to go the self-publishing route, and how a pirated copy of his book Looters And Grabbers started circulating in Kenyan WhatsApp groups.

We would like to thank Prestige Books for sponsoring this edition of the podcast. Prestige Books is your favourite bookstore for African and other literatures with branches on Mama Ngina Street in the Central Business District and at the Lavington Mall.

The African Literary Podcast, sponsored by Nairobi-based Prestige Books, interviews Kenyan novelist Makena Maganjo.

A few weeks ago, Makena Maganjo’s debut novel South B’s finest about life in a Nairobi estate over a few decades launched at the Goethe-Institut. The book has since gotten rave reviews from a writer very few had heard about before then. We speak to Makena at a Nairobi restaurant about her new book, how excited she is that the book has resonated with Kenyans and the writers who inspire here like Ayobami Adebayo and Zadie Smith.

We would like to thank Prestige Books for sponsoring this edition of the podcast. Prestige Books is your favourite bookstore for African and other literatures with branches on Mama Ngina Street in the Central Business District and at the Lavington Mall.

Lauren Beukes is the author of the books Maverick: Extraordinary Women From South Africa's Past (2004), Moxyland (2008), Zoo City(2010), The Shining Girls (2013), Broken Monsters (2014), and Motherland (2019). Her comics include The Wonder Woman, All The Survivors Club, The Pretty Ponies, and The Hidden Kingdom. She has won many awards for her writing including the Mbokodo Awards, the Strand Critics Award, and the Arthur C Clarke Award, the biggest award for science fiction in the world, for Zoo City in 2011. She is the only African to have won it so far.

The Cape Town resident spoke to us during the Sharjah International Book Fair in 2018 about the importance of art (prescient in ythe Covid19 world we now live in), the anger that inspired The Shining Girls and the positive effect of the Arthur C Clarke Award on her writing career.

We would like to thank Prestige Books for sponsoring this edition of the podcast. Prestige Books is your favourite bookstore for African and other literatures with branches on Mama Ngina Street in the Central Business District and at the Lavington Mall.

In Episode 12, we interview with Kenyan writer of fiction for all ages Kinyanjui Kombani. Kombani has two novels in The Last Villains of Molo and Den of Inequities has written several books for children and young adults.

In this interview conducted at the beginning of the year, Kombani speaks about his career so far, why Kenyan fiction hasn’t been forthcoming over the last few years, and the need to have a more Pan African approach to publishing.

We would like to thank Prestige Books for sponsoring this edition of the podcast. Prestige Books is your favourite bookstore for African and other literatures with branches on Mama Ngina Street in the Central Business District and at the Lavington Mall or online at https://prestigebookshop.com/.

In Episode 12, we have an interview with Kenyan writer of fiction for all ages Kinyanjui Kombani. Kombani has two novels in The Last Villains of Molo and Den of Inequities has written several books for children and young adults.

In this interview conducted at the beginning of the year, Kombani speaks about his career so far, why Kenyan fiction hasn’t been forthcoming over the last few years, and the need to have a more Pan African approach to publishing.

We would like to thank Prestige Books for sponsoring this edition of the podcast. Prestige Books is your favourite bookstore for African and other literatures with branches on Mama Ngina Street in the Central Business District and at the Lavington Mall or online at https://prestigebookshop.com/.

This is an exclusive interview with Kenyan novelist Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor conducted in a little café by Lavington Mall, Nairobi. She talks about her relationship with the late great Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina, the China that she writes about in her book The Dragonfly Sea. She also shares some of her favourite women writers. We would like to thank Prestige Books for sponsoring this edition of the podcast. Prestige Books is your favourite bookstore for your African and other literatures with branches on Mama Ngina Street in the Central Business District and at the Lavington Mall.

 Welcome to African Literary Podcast Episode 10 where we give you news from the African literary scene. As we have done previously, we look at new books to check out, news from the awards scene, literary festivals, and callouts for writers. 

 South African writer Mohale Mashigo talks about her work on her novel The Yearning, how she got to work on South Africa’s first comic superhero Kwezi, writing a book from a movie as well as a few writers she recommends. 

In the African Literary Podcast Episode 9, we eulogise Zimbabwe author, poet and actor Charles Mungoshi who passed away on February 16, 2019.