This week on AIAC Talk: 2021 has been declared a great year for African literature, but what does that actually mean?
Abdulrazak Gurnah at the Palestine Festival of Literature. Image via PalFest on Flickr CC BY 2.0.
This year is being roundly pronounced as “a great year for African writing.” From Zanzibar-born Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Nobel award to South African Damon Galgut nabbing the Booker—the list of African and diaspora writers winning prestigious literary prizes this year is long. Does this represent a paradigm shift in global literature, typically dominated by Western authors? Do these victories do anything to advance African publishing and literary culture? Joining us in this week’s AIAC Talk to unpack these themes, are Ainehi Edoro, Bhakti Shringarpure and Leila Aboulela.
Ainehi Edoro is a Nigerian writer an assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as well as the founder and editor of Brittle Paper, Bhakti Shringarpure is an associate professor of English at the University of Connecticut, editor-in-chief of Warscapes magazine and is also a founder of the Radical Books Collective; and Leila Aboulela is the prize-winning author of Bird Summons, The Translator, The Kindness of Enemies, Lyrics Alley and Elsewhere Home.
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