Brittle Paper‘s #QueerYourAfricanRead campaign is our way of showcasing African writing that humanizes queerness, and of continuing our support for queer writers in digital space. As part of this campaign, we ran a Twitter contest between October 4 and October 6. Brittle Paper followers were invited to to complete the sentence, “I read queer Afr.lit. bcoz…”. The challenge for contestants was to sum up their sentiments in no more than 280 characters (the length of a Tweet). The prize was USD 50 for books. The winning entry was to be the one that made us smile the most.

It was a tough decision. The entries we received conveyed sincerity, empathy, and care for queer African literature and lives. Above all, they conveyed pride. But because we could hardly toss a coin to decide, we ultimately chose not one, but two, winning entires.

Congratulations to @The_DWorld and @ToluuuB! Thank you for expressing so poignantly the power of literature to give us the courage to be different, to help us understand others, and to tell us that love, well, is love.

We want to take this opportunity to share the other entries, because we want to honor their thoughts and words. We thank these Brittle Paper followers — in truth, they all made us smile!