Relations: An Anthology of African and Diaspora Voices, edited by Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond, will be released January 2023. The anthology will be published by HarperVia, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, and features a 32 talented African authors in its pages.

According to the publisher’s note, it is a “fresh and electrifying collection of stories, poems, and essays from across the African continent.”

The storytellers in the anthology are interested in challenging the construction of self and the “other.” Instead, they illustrate the connections that link humans with each other and tell the stories of “our shared humanity” despite language, identity, class, and gender differences. Relations is a “meeting place of perspectives, a profound meditation on the diversity of the Black experience in a post-Black Panther world.”

The contributors to Relations: An Anthology of African and Diaspora Voices include:

  • Arao Ameny, recipient of the 2022 Mayor’s Individual Artist Award from the Creative Baltimore Fund
  • Conceição Lima, author of the poem “Afroinsularity”, which won the 2021 The Academy of American Poets / Words Without Border Poems in Translation Prize
  • Makanaka Mavengere, writer of the summer 2022 film Meet Melusi
  • Vanessa Walters, whose upcoming novel The Nigerwife will be developed into an HBO drama series

The editor of the anthology, Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond is a Ghanaian-American writer. She has written the children’s picture book Blue: A History of the Color as Deep as the Sea and as Wide as the Sky (2022) and YA novel Powder Necklace (2010). Her writing has appeared in Accra Noir, Africa39, New Daughters of Africa, and more. In 2014, she was showcased in the Africa39 project as one of 39 of Sub-Saharan Africa’s most promising writers under the age of 40.

Congrats to Ekua-Hammond and the writers featured in the anthology! Keep an eye out for the book’s release on January 17, 2023.

Preorder Relations: An Anthology of African and Diaspora Voices here.