In 1992, Margaret Busby, Britain’s first black female publisher, edited an anthology of female African writers and female writers of African descent. Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent from the Ancient Egyptian to the Present, published by Ballantine Books, was groundbreaking in its presentation and exposure of the work […]
Tag Archives: aminatta forna
Photos from the London Launch of Margaret Busby’s New Daughters of Africa Anthology
Last October, it was announced that Britain’s first black female publisher Margaret Busby will edit a new anthology featuring 200 female African writers and female writers of African descent across generations. New Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of 20th- and 21st-Century Writing by Women of African Descent—which “charts a contemporary literary canon from 1900 and […]
OkayAfrica’s 100 Women List 2019 Includes Aminatta Forna, Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, Sisonke Msimang, Alongside Adwoa Aboah, Thandie Newton, Oby Ezekwesili
The novelist Aminatta Forna, Cassava Republic Press co-founder Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, the essayist and activist Sisonke Msimang, the novelist Tomi Adeyemi, the memoirist Clemantine Wamariya, and the writer Kemiyondo Coutinho have been included in OkayAfrica‘s “100 Women” list for 2019. The six literary figures appear alongside the supermodels Adut Akech and Adwoa Aboah, the rising model Duckie Thot, […]
The Art & Politics of Walking in Public as Women of Colour: Aminatta Forna and Taiye Selasi in Conversation
Novelists Aminatta Forna and Taiye Selasi were recently in an email conversation about the art and politics of walking in public as women of colour. Their conversation, published by Literary Hub and titled “Whose Streets?,” is a revealing, empowering response to an essay by Forna which appeared in Freeman’s magazine. Titled “Power Walking,” Forna’s essay […]
The Revealing Reason Why Aminatta Forna Likes Writing Male Characters
Last year, Somali writer and visual artist Diriye Osman, author of the Polaris Award-winning story collection Fairytales for Lost Children and the forthcoming novel We Once Belonged to the Sea, explained the concept of literary androgyny: that gender-straddling sensibility possessed by the best storytellers—women writing men, men writing women. But Aminatta Forna, from the interview […]
The 2018 Open Book Festival Begins in Cape Town
The 2018 Open Book Festival has begun at The Fugard Theatre in Cape Town. The event, which is in its seventh year, will last from 5-9 September, with further activities at The District 6 Museum Homecoming Centre and The Book Lounge. Among the 2018 guests are Aminatta Forna, whose fourth novel Happiness dropped earlier in the […]
Five Beautiful Acts of Generosity by African Writers
In the midst of the pressure to deliver under that heavy tag “African Writer,” in the back and forth between critics and between writers and between critics and writers, in the midst of big novels and million-dollar book deals and accumulating prizes, it is easy to lose sight of community and what it means to […]
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