Three writers and artists have been named the Fall 2026 fellows of the Tejumola Olaniyan Creative Writers-in-Residence program at The Africa Institute, part of Global Studies University (GSU) in Sharjah, UAE. They are Ugandan novelist Goretti Kyomuhendo, Nigerian essayist Nzube Nlebedim, and Tanzanian cartoonist Godfrey Mwampembwa, who works under the name Gado.

According to the Institute’s announcement, the three projects deal with life under the COVID-19 lockdowns, family histories tied to the Nigerian Civil War, and the roots of radicalization in East Africa. Across fiction, memoir, and graphic storytelling, the fellows will take up memory, belonging, inequality, and resilience during their time in Sharjah. The fellowship is named for the late Nigerian scholar and critic Tejumola Olaniyan and supports writers connected to Africa and the African diaspora, giving them room to work on creative projects within the Institute’s academic community.

Kyomuhendo is no stranger to Brittle Paper readers. She is the founding director of the African Writers Trust and of TUBAZE African Books, and the author of five novels, among them Secrets No More (1999), which won the Uganda National Literary Award for Best Novel, Waiting (2007), which has been translated into Spanish, and Promises (2025). She holds a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, was the first Ugandan woman to receive an International Writing Program fellowship at the University of Iowa, and was named one of New African’s 100 Most Influential Africans in 2019. A founding member of FEMRITE, Uganda’s women writers’ association and publishing house, she served as its first director for ten years. Brittle Paper reported in 2020 when she was appointed a Civil Society Advisory Governor by the Commonwealth Foundation. In 2024, Ber Anena spoke with her about the reissue of Whispers from Vera in an interview titled “I Wanted to Center the Ugandan Woman’s Experiences, Voice, and Perspective”. Ruth S. Wenske followed in 2025 with a behind-the-scenes interview about Promises. This year, Narrative Landscape Press acquired East and West Africa rights to the novel and unveiled the cover of its regional edition.

During her residency, Kyomuhendo will work on The Invisible Enemy, a novel that follows four characters through the global lockdown. The book looks at migration and exile, loss, love, and the daily struggle of living through the pandemic and its aftermath.

Nlebedim is an essayist, literary critic, and editor with a master’s degree in English Literature from the University of Ibadan and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Lagos. He completed the 2025 Granta Memoir Writing Course and has received funding from the Hawthornden Foundation. His debut essay collection, At Night Men Take the Lonely Way Back Home, came out in 2024. He also founded The Shallow Tales Review, the journal of African and Black literature that Brittle Paper has followed for years, in 2019. Brittle Paper has covered it when it released its 33rd issue on the theme of loss, when its 34th issue explored disruption, and when it hosted a literary reading featuring 18 African writers.

His residency project is Hotel Lumumba, a memoir about his maternal and paternal grandfathers and what they did during the Nigerian Civil War. It grows out of his discovery that the maternal grandfather he never met ran a hotel named for the Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba. The memoir weaves these family stories together with his own childhood memories of Nigeria’s return to democracy in 1999.

Gado is an editorial cartoonist, graphic journalist, animator, and television producer. His cartoons have appeared in The Continent, Daily Nation, Le Monde, Courrier International, and Deutsche Welle. He co-founded Buni Media and created The XYZ Show, a satirical puppet program that has aired weekly on Kenyan television since 2009. A graduate of the classical animation program at Vancouver Film School, he has won the Prince Claus Award, the Cartooning for Peace International Editorial Cartoon Award, and the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism. In 2022, France made him a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters.

He will use the residency to develop The Martyr, a graphic novel about economic inequality, marginalization, radicalization, and violent extremism in East Africa. Its protagonist is Omar, a young Kenyan sculptor who joins al-Shabaab after two years of imprisonment following a wrongful arrest. The book draws on the region’s history and politics and looks at the part played by state institutions, security agencies, religious and political leaders, and the international community. It also asks how comics can open public conversation about radicalization and its toll on individuals and communities.

Congratulations to Goretti Kyomuhendo, Nzube Nlebedim, and Gado.