As Africa emerges from her past.....
time, that swift wind sweeps,
history, lore and art
with the wind hurry into extinction
but ancient traditions still remain..
under the moon light we gather to tell Africa's stories
wielders of the sacred pen catch the wind
they sieve from it the yarns of history
and paint for us the visions of our lives
they preserve our culture and speak our voices
so that under the moonlight we shall gather once again....to tell Africa's stories...
This week on The Emerge Review, we feature our top fourteen African Authors!
This list is in no particular order. Enjoy!
Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche was born on 15 September 1977 in Enugu Nigeria, the fifth of six
children to Igbo parents. At the age of
nineteen, Chimamanda left for the United States. She gained scholarship to
study communication and political science at the eastern Connecticut state
university. She graduated in 2001 and went to complete a Masters degree in
creative writing at John Hopkins University Baltimore. Her first novel Purple
Hibiscus which was released in October 2003 has received wide and critical
acclaim. It was shortlisted for the Orange fiction prize (2004) and was awarded
the common wealth writers prize for best first book (2005).
Her second novel
Half of a Yellow Sun is set before and during the Biafran war. It was published
in August 2006. Half Of a Yellow sun is now being adapted into a movie by the
British film institute.
Zukiswa Wanner was born in Zambia to a
South African father and a Zimbabwean Mother. Her debut novel, The Madam,
published in 2006, dealt with racial role reversals in post-apartheid South
Africa. Her second novel, Behind Every Successful Man was published in 2008 by
Kwela books. Men of the south, her third novel came out in 2010. Zukiswa has
also contributed essays to Oprah, Elle and Juice magazines, and literary
reviews and essays to Afropolitan and Sunday independent, as well as the
International online Journal African Writing.
She is also a founding member of
the ReadSA initiative, a campaign encouraging south Africa to read south African Works.
Unity Dow is a novelist, human rights activist and lawyer. She was appointed as
Botswana’s first female judge of the high court in January 1998. Unity reckons
that in writing novels she is "reclaiming the voice" to speak out on
human rights and women issues. Her writings which strongly express women's
struggles for equality and justice in Botswana are inspired by her immediate
experiences of working to advance laws pertaining to child support, rape and
married women’s property rights. Her first novel Far and Beyond describes a
family in a rural village in modern day Botswana struggling to come to terms
with the contradictions between traditional and western values, gender
conflicts, poverty and the crisis of the Aids epidemic. 
Many of the experiences
in the book reflect Dow's experiences of life in Botswana but they are not in
themselves autobiographical. Dow has written two other novels, Screaming of The
Innocent and Juggling Truths.
Doreen Baingana grew up in Entebbe, Uganda. She graduated from Makerere
University with a JD and from the University of Maryland with an MFA. Her book
Tropical Fish Won the 2006 common wealth writers prize, best first book Africa
and an AWP short fiction award.
Her works have appeared in AGNI, Glimmer Train,
African American Review, Callaloo, The Gaurdian and Kwani.
Binyavanga wainaina was born in Nakuru, in the Kenyan province of Rift Valley
in 1971. He is the founder of the Literary Magazine, Kwani, which has
established itself as a stimulating platform for Kenyan and African creativity.
In 2001 Wainaina was distinguished with the renowned Caine prize for African
Literature after his short story Discovering Home had been published in the
internet Magazine G21net. The story is an author biographical narrative of the
authors trip from his home in South Africa to his birth place in Uganda, where
his grand parents were living.
Wanaina's works have been published on the East
Africa, The New Yorker and The Guardian.
Helon Habila was born in kaltungo Gombe state and educated at the university of
Jos and university of East Anglia England. His first book waiting for an angel
was awarded the common wealth writers prize for new writing (African region
2002) and the Caine prize (2001). In 2000 he won the Muson poetry prize. He was
the first Chinua Achebe fellow at Bard College (2008), a William B Quarton
fellow at the university of Iowa international writing programme and the John Farrar
fellow in fiction at the 2003 Bread Loaf Writers. 
Helon teaches creative
writing at the George Mason university in Fair Fax, Virginia in the USA where
he lives with his family.
Petina Gappah is a Zimbabwean writer
and a voice of Zimbabwe. She studied law at the Universities of Zimbabwe, Craz in
Austria and Cambridge. Her short fiction is featured in two anthologies, Laughing Now and Women Writing Zimbabwe, both
published in 2008 by Weaver Press, Zimbabwe. In 2007, she came second in a
SADC-wide short story contest judged by J.M. Coetzee. She lives in Geneva,
Switzerland with her son Kush, where she works as a lawyer for the ACWL, an organization
that advises developing countries on international trade law.
Her debut novel An Elegy for Easterly , she dissects with real poignancy
the lives of people caught up in a situation over which they have no control,
as they deal with spiraling inflation, power cuts and financial hardship - a
way of life under Mugabe's regime - and cope with issues common to all people
everywhere; failed promises, disappointments and unfulfilled dreams.
Compelling, unflinching and tender, "An Elegy for Easterly" is a
defining book and a stunning portrait of a country in chaotic meltdown.
Cristina Ali Farah was born in 1973 in Italy to a Somali
father and an Italian mother. Farah grew up in Mogadishu the capital of
Somalia. She attended an Italian school there until the Somalia civil war broke
out in 1991. In 2007 she published her first novel Madre Piccolla (Little
mother). In Italy her novels and poetry have been published in various
magazines such as Nuovi Argomentis, Quaderni
del 900, Pagine and Sagana. In 2006, Farah won the national literary competition
“Lingua Madre (Mother Tongue) promoted by the women thoughts studies center.
She was also honored by the city of Torino at the international Torino book
fair. Farah is also president of The Magra news agency and a writer for Caffe Newspaper.
Myne Whitman is a
pen name. She was born and raised in Enugu, Nigeria, where she spent most
of her time, studying, reading and daydreaming or climbing trees and playing
with the boys. She has a Master’s degree in Public Health Research but has
chosen her childhood dream of spinning stories. After a few years in Edinburgh,
Scotland, she now lives with her husband in Seattle, USA. She writes and blogs
full-time, and also volunteers as an ESL tutor for a local charity. She
critiques with the Seattle Eastside Writers Meet-up and is also a member of the
Pacific Northwest Writers Association.
In addition to writing popular fiction to get
people reading,
Myne is passionate about using the internet and social media to
promote the book industry and literacy levels in Nigeria. To this end, she
facilitated a session, "Social Media and the Book Publishing
Industry", for the Publisher’s Forum at the 2010 Garden City Literary
Festival, Port Harcourt, Nigeria. She is also the founder and managing editor
of NaijaStories.com, a critique website for aspiring Nigerian
writers.
Niq Mhlongo was born in 1973 in Soweto. He has a BA from the
University of the Witwatersrand, with majors in African literature and
political studies. In 2004 his first novel Dog eat Dog was published by Quela
and was translated into Spanish under the title Perro Come Perro in 2006. This
Spanish edition was awarded the Mar Des Lettras prize.
Besides writing novels,
Niq has written a screen play for the animated children’s TV series magic
cellar and scripts for a comic magazine called Mshana, the first issue of which
appeared in February 2007. After Tears is his second novel.
Brian Chikwava is from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second largest
city. He spent his formative years in Harare, where at popular artiste’s venue,
The Book café; he regularly took part in poet’s evenings, public discussions
and music performances. It is here that he started experimenting with different
genres of art by collaborating with other young writers and musicians in an
attempt to create new ways of presenting the African experience.
His short
story Seventh Street Alchemy was awarded the 2004 Caine prize for African
writing. He has been a Charles Pick fellow at the University of East Anglia and
lives in London.
Author photographer
and art historian Teju Cole was born in 1975 in the us to Nigerian parents
raised in
Nigeria. He is the author of the novella everyday for thre
thief and the novel open city which won the pen Hemmingway award for fiction
and the Rosenthal award of the American academy of arts and letters. Teju cole
contributes to the new Yorker, the new York times, Tin house, the atlantic and
public space.
He is currently working on a full llenght book length non fiction
narrative of lagos.
Left to Tell recounts Immaculée Ilibagiza’s experience during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. She survived hidden for 91 days with seven other women in a small bathroom, no larger than 3 feet (0.91 m) long and 4 feet (1.2 m) wide. The bathroom was concealed in a room behind a wardrobe in the home of a Hutu pastor. During the genocide, most of Ilibagiza’s family was killed by Hutu Interahamwe soldiers: her mother, her father, and her two brothers Damascene and Vianney. Besides herself, the only other survivor in her family was her brother Aimable, who was studying out of the country in Senegal. In Left to Tell Ilibagiza shares how her Roman Catholic faith guided her through her terrible ordeal, and describes her eventual forgiveness and compassion toward her family's killers.
It wasn’t until another thirteen years later, however, that the romantic in her geared her toward romance. She now focuses on heart-warming multicultural romance with enough passion to enthrall readers who want a little sizzle with their romance.
She lives in her native country, Ghana, which provides the exotic setting for most of her novels.
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