Contributors
Abdilatif Abdalla (born in 1946 in Mombasa) is a Kenyan writer and political activist. He was imprisoned from 1968-1972 for his support of the Kenya People’s Union, and wrote the poems collected in Sauti ya Dhiki while in solitary confinement, which were subsequently awarded the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature. Upon his release from prison, he went into exile in Tanzania and worked at the University of Dar es Salaam, and in 1979 moved to London to work for the BBC Swahili Service. He subsequently taught Swahili at SOAS University of London and University of Leipzig before retiring in 2011.
Afua Ansong is a Ghanaian American writer, dancer, and photographer. Her work interrogates the challenges of the African immigrant in the United States, exploring themes of transition, citizenship, and identity. Her chapbook American Mercy is forthcoming with Finishing Line Press. Her work can be seen or is forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Frontier, Newfound and elsewhere.
Reem Bassiouney is the author of five highly acclaimed novels in Arabic, all of which have been bestsellers in Egypt. Her second novel, The Pistachio Seller won the best Arabic translated novel award in 2009, and her novel Professor Hanaa, which appeared in Arabic in 2008, won first prize in the Sawiris literary award - the biggest award in Egypt. Professor Hanaa came out in English, Spanish, Greek and soon in Italian. Bassiouney is an associate professor of linguistics at the department of applied linguistics at the AUC.
Both of her translated novels, The pistachio seller and Professor Hanaa are currently available in English at Kutub khan (maadi branch only), and on amazon.
Susan Nalugwa Kiguli is an academic and poet. She holds a PhD in English from The University of Leeds (UK) sponsored by the Commonwealth Scholarship Scheme. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Literature, Makerere University. She was the African Studies Association Presidential Fellow, 2011 and this presented her with an opportunity to read her poetry at the Library of Congress, Washington DC in November, 2011. She was a Poet in Residence at the Siftung Kunst: Raum Sylt Quelle, Germany between October- November, 2008. She was also among three African poets who not only performed before the former President of Germany, His Excellency Horst Kohler in 2008 at the International Literature Festival Berlin but was also honoured as one of the poets to appear in his book on Africa entitled SCHISKAL AFRIKA, 2010. She has served as the chairperson of FEMRITE, Uganda Women Writers’ Association. She currently serves on the Advisory Board for the African Writers Trust (AWT). She was the chief convener for both The 2nd Eastern African Literary & Cultural Studies Conference, August 2015 and Celebrating Ugandan Writing: Okot p’Bitek’s Song of Lawino at 50, March, 2016 held at Makerere University, Uganda. She is the author of The African Saga and Home Floats in a Distance/Zuhause Treibt in der Ferne(Gedichte): a bilingual edition in English and German. She has recently participated in the Afrowomen Poetry Project founded by the Italian journalist Antonella Sinopoli. Her research interests fall mainly in the area of oral and written African poetry, popular song, stylistics and performance theory. She writes poetry in both Luganda and English.
Merit Kabugo is a Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics, English Studies and Communication Skills, for the School of Languages, Literature and Communication, at the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Makerere University.
Moses Kilolo manages the Mabati-Cornell Kiswahili Prize for African Literature and is the project lead for the Jalada Africa language and translation project. The inaugural Jalada translation issue, which he conceptualized and continues to provide editorial coordination, features the single most translated story in the history of African writing. Moses served as the Managing Editor for Jalada Africa between 2014 and 2018. His writing has been published in Saraba, Veem House of Performance and Radio Africa Magazine among others. He writes in Kikamba, Kiswahili and English.
Nyambura Mpesha teaches African Literature, African Children’s Literature, and Swahili language as a Lecturer IV in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan. She is the author of 53 books, numerous short stories, plays and poems published in magazines or aired on radio and television. She continues to research in Children’s Literature and African Oral Literature. She is a three time recipient of the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature for Far Far Away in Children’s Stories category in English in 2007, Hanna na Wanyama in Children’s Stories category in Swahili in 2007, A Mule Called Christmas in Children’s Stories category in English in 2009. She was nominated for the NSK Prize for Children’s Literature for Junior Pilot and Kuku na Mwewe in 2007.
Elizabeth Mputu is an artist based in Orlando, Florida. Mputu works within a space of feminist net art to understand the ways in which whiteness and privilege manifest on the internet. Their multiplatform and multimedia practice engages with issues related to sex, gender, race and queerness. Mputu constructs projects using interactive media, video, sculpture and installation. Mputu's project /inb4/ was rated one of Artsy's Top 10 Masterpieces to be experienced online in 2019 and is a 2016 Rhizome Microgrant recipient.
Kagayi Ngobi began composing and performing poetry while studying at Makerere University. He is the author of 'The Headline That Morning and Other Poems' (2016), 'PuPu Poems' (2018) and 'For My Negativity' (2019). His poems have been featured in a number of theatre productions and poetry anthologies. He lives in Kampala.
Mukoma Wa Ngugi is an Associate Professor of English at Cornell University and the author of the novels Mrs. Shaw (2015) Black Star Nairobi (2013) Nairobi Heat (2011) and two books of poetry, Hurling Words at Consciousness (2006) and Logotherapy (2016). He is the co-founder of the Mabati-Cornell Kiswahili Prize for African Literature and co-director of the Global South Project - Cornell.
Mary Pena engages in multidisciplinary practices that explore space, materiality, visual culture, embodiment and the senses. She is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology and Museum Studies at the University of Michigan. Her dissertation project fuses modes of ethnography and photography to ask how the changing material composition of urban spaces, targeted for tourism renewal, place pressure on sensory orders and embodied experiences of place in the northern port town of Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic. Pena is the co-founder of Black Haptics Lab, a multimodal collective that curates experimental projects across fields of art and critical inquiry, and a founding member of Making Sensory Ethnography, a graduate student working group, dedicated to transforming dominant formats of knowledge creation at the University of Michigan.
Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún is a linguist, writer, and scholar. His first collection of poetry Edwardsville by Heart was published by Wisdom’s Bottom Press in 2018. He is the first African awardee of the Premio Ostana, a prize given by Chambra D’Oc in Italy, to work and advocacy in the mother tongue. He lives in Lagos.
Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún jẹ́ onímọ̀ èdè, òǹkọ̀wé, àti ọ̀jọ̀gbọ́n. Ìwé ewìi rẹ̀ àkọ́kọ́ Edwardsville by Heart ni a kọ́kọ́ tẹ̀jáde láti ọwọ́ Wisdom’s Bottom Press ní 2018. Òun ni ọmọ adúláwọ̀ kìnní tí a fún ní Premio Ostana, oyè tí Chambra D’Oc ní Itálì ń fún ni, fún iṣẹ́ àti ìṣègbèfún lílo èdè abínibí. Ìlú Èkó ni ó ń gbé.
Editors
Frieda Ekotto is Professor in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies and of Comparative Literature and Francophone Studies at the University of Michigan, Frieda Ekotto is the author of ten books, the most recent scholarly monograph being What Color is Black? Race and Sex across the French Atlantic (Lexington Press, 2011). Her early research traced interactions between philosophy, law, literature and African cinema, and she currently works on LGBT issues, with an emphasis on West African cultures within Africa as well as in Europe and the Americas. She received the Nicolàs Guillèn Prize for Philosophical Literature in 2014 and the Benezet Award for excellence in her field from Colorado College in 2015. In 2017, she co-produced the feature-length documentary Vibrancy of Silence: A Discussion with My Sisters, which premiered at the University of Michigan. That year she also received an Honorary Degree from Colorado College and in 2018 was given the Zagora International Film Festival of Sub-Saharan Award for her work in African cinema. She is also one of the editors for this edition of Absinthe.
Imani Cooper engages in interdisciplinary practices at the confluence of literature, art+ design, and information technology. She is a PhD candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Digital Studies Institute at the University of Michigan. Her current work examines alternative approaches to data and information production that are grounded in African diasporic experiences. Cooper is a co-founder of Black Haptics Lab, a multimodal collective that mobilizes experimental projects to enact a critical-aesthetic praxis committed to the sentience of black social living. Cooper also serves as one of the editors for this edition of Absinthe.
Xiaoxi Zhang is a writer and a translator. She is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan. With a working capacity in Chinese, English, Portuguese, Kiswahili, Arabic and Spanish, as well as a reading knowledge of several other languages, her work draws from examples across different continents in order to revise the notion of “modern language” in a non-exclusionary manner. In addition, she is also dedicated to cross-cultural communications between people from non-Western spaces. She has previously translated Agostinho Neto’s work from Portuguese to Chinese, and wrote a critical introduction to works by Paulina Chiziane, to be published in Chinese. She is also currently working on the translation of Shafi Adam Shafi’s novel, Vuta n’Kuvute, into Chinese, to be published as a part of an upcoming African Writers Series in China. She is one of the editors to this issue of Absinthe.