Editors Nduka Otiono and Funmi Gaji are accepting submissions for Stories They Forgot to Tell: An Anthology of Nigerian Short Stories, a new collection due out in 2027 from Narrative Landscape Press in Lagos. Submissions close December 15, 2026.

The anthology sets out to capture the current moment of Nigerian short fiction, bringing together emerging and established voices working across the form’s full range. The editors frame the short story as one of Nigeria’s most dynamic literary genres, pointing to collections like Uwem Akpan’s Say You’re One of Them, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck, Igoni Barrett’s Love is Power, or Something Like That, Uche Okonkwo’s A Kind of Madness, Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike’s Double Wahala, Double Trouble, and Chinelo Okparanta’s Happiness Like Water as evidence of the form’s continued vitality.

The project is also positioned as something of a direct response to a gap the editors see elsewhere. Otiono and Gaji point to Ben Okri’s African Stories, his thirty-six-story anthology for Penguin Random House’s Everyman’s Library Pocket Classics, in which Okri has said his focus on excellence and wide continental representation led him to privilege literary elders, leaving little room for their contemporary inheritors. While sharing Okri’s respect for foundational figures, Stories They Forgot to Tell turns its attention to the generation actively shaping the short story form today.

The editors are inviting original, previously unpublished short fiction from Nigerian writers, open to fantastical or realist, abstract or intimate, lyrical or experimental work. Writers are encouraged to explore themes including identity, memory, survival, dislocation and japa, loss and grief, and desire and sexuality, though submissions aren’t limited to these. Preference will go to stories with strong attention to craft, voice, characterization, and emotional resonance, and the editors will also consider extracts from novels-in-progress that stand as a complete story or episode on their own.

Submission guidelines:

  • Stories must be original and previously unpublished, between 3,000 and 5,000 words
  • Submissions should be double-spaced and page-numbered
  • Contact information — name, email address, mailing address, and phone number — must appear on the first page
  • Include a third-person biography of no more than 100 words
  • Preferred file formats are Word doc or docx; please do not send PDFs
  • Submit to storiestheyforgottotell@gmail.com by December 15, 2026

Nduka Otiono is a professor of English and African Studies and Director of the Institute of African Studies at Carleton University, Canada. His short story collection The Night Hides with a Knife (1995) won the ANA/Spectrum Prize for fiction, and he has co-edited close to a dozen books, including the anthologies Camouflage: Best of Contemporary Writing from Nigeria (2006), We-Men: An Anthology of Men Writing on Women (2008), and, most recently, Unbound: An Anthology of New Nigerian Poets Under 40 (2025).

Funmi Gaji is a writer, researcher, and professional editor, and the Founding Editor of ArtisansQuill, a platform championing the craft of contemporary African writers. She holds a PhD in Literature-in-English from the University of Ibadan, with expertise in Global South literature and literary theory. She is the author of The Script of Bruises (2017), has moderated literary panels across Nigeria, and her poems have appeared in Unbound (2025) and journals including ANA Review, Jalada, Olongo, and Prairie Schooner.