Leading Cameroon-based magazine Bakwa recently launched a publishing arm, Bakwa Books, to discover and promote fresh voices in Cameroonian literature. The press will make its debut in May 2019, with the anthology Of Passion and Ink: New Voices from Cameroon, a collection of short stories longlisted for the Bakwa Magazine Short Story Prize, with a few more commissioned.

Edited by Bakwa Magazine founder Dzekashu MacViban, Of Passion and Ink: New Voices from Cameroon features writing by Dipita Kwa, Bengono Essola Edouard, Monique Kwachou, MacViban, Howard M-B Maximus, Nkiacha Atemnkeng, A. Bouna Guazong, Rita Bakop, Momo Bertrand, and Wise Nzikie Ngasa.

Here is a description of the anthology by Bakwa Books:

From Limbe, the seaside city, to Kolofata in the north of Cameroon, Of Passion and Ink moves from stories of star-crossed lovers, mental health, dark fantasy, displacement, speculative futures to radicalization. These stories subvert what is believed to be the Cameroonian short story and offer exciting new directions.

Selected from the Bakwa Magazine Short Story Prize, as well as commissioned, these stories herald new voices in Cameroonian fiction, by young writers who write in English and French.

Of Passion and Ink: New Voices from Cameroon comes with a cover blurb by the Cameroonian writer Dibussi Tande (“A new generation of writers who will undoubtedly leave their mark on the Cameroonian and global literary scene”).

The anthology has also been praised by the Kenyan writer Billy Kahora (“These stories are the narrative footprint of a new generation of Cameroon writers. . . astonishing and delightfully creative”) and the South African writer Diane Awerbuck (“An intense, effervescent and unsettling tour of our cosmopolitan continent, doing what African writing does best – showcasing powerful, satisfying imagery in settings we think we know”).

ABOUT THE EDITOR

Dzekashu MacViban is a writer, journalist and editor based in Yaoundé. In 2011, he published a collection of poems titled Scions of the Malcontent and founded Bakwa Magazine. After a one year gig at the Ann Arbor Review of Books, he subsequently wrote for Goethe.de/kamerun, The Africa Report, This Is Africa, and IDG Connect. In 2016, he was a writer-in-residence at the Ebedi International Writers Residency. His fiction has appeared in Wasafiri, Kwani?, and Jungle Jim. He was runner-up for the Sonora Review’s Flash Friday Caption Contest in 2012, and received Special Mention for the 2016 Short Story Day Africa Prize. He was formerly Editorial Manager at This Is Africa.

Brittle Paper congratulates Bakwa Books and Bakwa Magazine.

Find out more at Bakwa Books.