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Nigerian poet and editor-in-chief at Agbowó , Adedayo Agarau, is rooting for all African writers: ‘I think we work extra hard on our craft, and for what purpose? We are writing and building structures for other emerging collectives, and it just has to work.
The first anthology of poems I ever read was West African Verse: An Anthology, chosen and annotated by Donatus Ibe Nwoga. It was my window into creative writing.
You will see what the work means to the writer in the way the sentences progress—the way the dialogues thicken and thin—you’d almost see the spear of the work coming at you in your dream.
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About the Author
is a Wallace Stegner Fellow, Cave Canem Fellow, and the author of The Years of Blood, which will be published by Fordham University Press in the fall of 2025.
Nigerian novelist, poet and author of Graceland, Chris Abani, does not believe ‘Nigerian literature’ exists as a category: ‘It is a common misconception that there is a fixed category that can be read as essentially “Nigerian literature”. Nigeria has 500 nations, 500 languages and about 2,000 dialects. While culture and language can overlap, the level of diversity is such that Nigerian literature cannot be easily narrowed down.’
For the co-founder and publishing director, of Cassava Republic Press, which marks its 20th anniversary this year, Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, it is telling that African literature is often pronounced dead in recent years, when more women and queer voices are becoming more prominent: ‘The loudest obituary writers about African literature tend to be men. These elegies seem to come from a tacit sense of personal or generational displacement rather than from the actual state of the field.’
Nigerian poet, novelist and author of Madame Sosostris and the Festival for the Broken-Hearted, Ben Okri, argues that Nigerian literature doesn’t always have to be about Nigeria: ‘Nigerian literature limits itself to Nigeria and then limits even the ways in which the country can be written about. What we want is a vast literature, a great literature…that speaks to all humanity.’
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