Notes on Contributors
Iquo Diana Abasi writes prose, poetry, and nonfiction. Her interests include the intersection of the environment, womanhood, and African cosmology. Her poetry collections, Symphony of Becoming (2013), and Coming Undone as Stitches Tighten (2022) have been nominated for the NLNG Nigeria prize for literature and other prizes. She is the author of Èfó Rírò and Other Stories (2020). Iquo edits the African speculative fiction magazine, omenana.com, and is presently a graduate student at The University of Alabama.
Ademola Adesola is an Assistant Professor at the Department of English, Languages, and Cultures, Mount Royal University, Canada. He completed his PhD at the University of Manitoba, Canada; and his MA and BA are from Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria. Ademola’s research and teaching interests are postcolonial literatures, African/Black diaspora literatures, child soldier narratives, popular culture, and human rights issues. Ademola has published essays and book chapters on African literature and socio-political issues. His poems have appeared in different publications.
Mawuli Adjei is currently a post-retirement Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, African and Postcolonial Literatures, Oral Literature, Poetry, and Popular Genres at the Department of English, University of Ghana, Legon. He is the author of Testament of the Seasons (poetry, 2011), The Jewel of Kabibi (novel, 2012), The Witch of Lagbati (novel, 2014), Filaments (poetry, 2019), Bakudi’s Ghost (novel, 2019), and Guilty as Charged (short stories, 2019). His works have won him several awards, including the VALCO Trust Literary Award (poetry, 1996), GAW Atukwei Okai Poetry Prize (2018, 2019), GAW Ayi Kwei Armah Novel Prize (2019), and GAW Ama Ata Aidoo Short Story Prize (2019).
Oluwafumilayo Akinpelu is a PhD student of English Literature at the University of Alabama, a writer, and a collaborative interactive arts enthusiast with a self-published novel titled Half Lives. She earned her Master’s Degree in Comparative (Literary) History at Central European University, and she obtained a BA in Literature-in-English from Obafemi Awolowo University. Her research interests include Nigerian contemporary literary history, futurisms, and feminisms, digital storytelling, as well as gendered visual, material, and (East Asian) popular cultures.
Adetayo Alabi is a Professor of English at the University of Mississippi. He teaches and researches literary theories, world literatures, and cultures, particularly postcolonial African, African American, and African Caribbean cultures. He is the author of numerous publications, including books titled Oral Forms of Nigerian Autobiography and Life Stories published by Routledge in 2022 and Telling Our Stories: Continuities and Divergences in Black Autobiographies published by Palgrave in 2005.
Victor Temitope Alabi obtained his PhD in African Linguistics from Indiana University. He is a Visiting Lecturer at the Center for Language Studies in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at Brown University. He is also a Faculty Affiliate of the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs as well as the Linguistic Program at Brown University.
Rachel Oluwafisayo Aluko is a Lecturer at Lead City University Ibadan, Nigeria. She gained her PhD in European literature from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, where she earlier obtained a Master’s degree with focus on African literature in 2008. Her areas of interest include Comparative Literature, Gender Studies, Ecocriticism, and Literature and Sustainability, among others. She has published in different journals; End of Service Year is her short story published under the 2020 KANAC Digital Anthology Series. Her love for creative writing is mostly expressed in poetry.
Kofi Anyidoho, bilingual poet, literary scholar, educator, and cultural activist, has been Professor of Literature; Director of the CODESRIA African Humanities Institute Program; First Occupant of the Kwame Nkrumah Chair in African Studies; Ag. Director, School of Performing Arts, and Head of the English Department at the University of Ghana, Legon. He has lectured and performed his poetry in English and Ewe globally, published several books of poetry, journal articles, and book chapters, and edited major books on African literature and the humanities. He was President of the US-based African Literature Association (ALA); Fellow and past Vice President (Arts), Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences (FGA); and Corresponding Fellow, Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE).
Adewuyi Aremu holds a BA (Ed.) in English and an MA in Literature-in-English, both from the University of Ilorin, Nigeria. He works at present with the Schools and Colleges Division, Kwara State Teaching Service Commission, Ilorin. He is a PhD student at the University of Ilorin. His research interests include Oral Literature, Contemporary Nigerian Drama and Poetry, Creative Writing, and Literary Trauma Criticism.
Kadija George is an independent researcher. She received her doctorate from Brighton University on Black British Publishers and Pan-Africanism (to be published by AWP) and an ECR fellowship from SAS in Inclusion, Participation. and Engagement. She is the cofounder of Mboka Festival of Arts Culture and the International Black Speculative Writing Festival. She has published her poetry collection Irki and is developing an app on African poetry, AfriPoeTree.
Jerome Masamaka is an academic and a poet, of Ghanaian origin, who now lives in Perth, Western Australia. He holds a PhD in Creative Writing. His collection of poems, Under the Tattered Roof (2023), laments recent incidents of climate change and celebrates those intriguing aspects of nature that humans can only standby and appreciate. His research interests include Environmental Literature and Postcolonial Literature.
Edafe Mukoro holds a PhD in English and Literature from the University of Benin, Nigeria. He lectures in English at JUPEB Foundation School, University of Benin, Nigeria.
Ifeoma Okoye is a veteran, versatile, and prolific writer, a novelist, short story writer, and writer of children’s books. Author of several award winning novels, her Behind the Clouds (1983) and Men Without Ears (1984) distinguished her as one of the most incisive pioneer feminist authors in Nigeria. Men Without Ears won the Association of Nigerian Authors’ (ANA) Best Fiction of the Year Award in 1984. It is widely read in schools and Colleges in Nigeria and beyond. Behind the Clouds won, in 1983, the Nigerian Festival of Arts’ Fiction Prize and has since been translated into Amharic. Her other novels include, Chimere (1992) and The Fourth World (2013). Her Short Stories have been published in numerous international anthologies with highly acclaimed reviews. Her children’s books have been popular and famous on both sides of the Atlantic. They include, The Village Boy (1978), winner of MacMillan’s Children’s Literature Prize in 1978, and Chika’s House (1995), which has been translated into Kiswahili, Ndebele, and Shona.
Ogaga Okuyade is Professor of English and Dean, Faculty of Arts, Niger Delta University, Nigeria. He is widely published and teaches African Literature and Culture, Popular/Folk Culture, African-American and African Diaspora Studies, as well as the English Novel. He is the editor of the seminal book entitled Eco-critical Literature: Regreening African Landscapes.
Alexander Opicho is a poet, essayist, and literary critic, as well as a short story writer, from Kenya.
Matrida Phiri is a poet and short story writer based in Lusaka, Zambia, who was born in 1963. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Biblical Studies and a Diploma in Creative Writing. Matrida works for an international NGO for children and has three adult daughters and a grandson. Two of her poems, IMPOSED NUPTIALS and PEVERT have been published in the November 2023 and February 2024 Editions of the Writers Space Africa magazine, respectively, and the International Human Rights Art Movement have accepted, for publication in their June edition, her poem TRADITION. In 2017 she self-published a memoir, FROTH: My Battle with Low Self-Esteem, which is available on Amazon in paperback form and as a Kindle e-book. In her spare time, she likes to read, write, and watch soccer with her family.
Paramita Routh Roy is an M.Phil. Research scholar at Jadavpur University, and is pursuing research on African Literature with special emphasis on Black Masculinity Studies. She is currently working as a faculty member in the Department of English at Sister Nivedita University, New Town. After completing her post-graduation from University of Calcutta, Ms Roy cleared the UGC-NET examination in 2019. She has specialized in Gender Studies, Harold Pinter’s works, and Modern European Classics. Many of her research articles have been published in journals of national and international repute. Her contributions to Black Masculinity Studies have been recognized by the African Literature Association, and she is looking forward to her future collaborations with them. Her research interests include African Literature, Afro-American Literature, Urdu Literature, and Queer Studies.
Rose A. Sackeyfio teaches in the Department of Liberal Studies at Winston Salem State University. She is the author of African Women Narrating Identity: Local and Global Journeys of the Self (Routledge 2023) and West African Women in the Diaspora: Narratives of Other Spaces, Other Selves (Routledge, 2021). She is editor of a volume of critical essays, Women Writing Diaspora in the 21st Century (Lexington Books, 2021) and co-editor of Emerging Perspectives on Akachi Adimora Ezeigbo (Lexington Books, 2017).
Milena Vladić Jovanov is an Associate Professor of Philology in the Department of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at the Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade. Her research interests encompass contemporary literary theory, the relationship between philosophy and literature, interdisciplinary studies of film, media, and literature, avant-garde movements, Anglo-American poetry and prose, nineteenth-century prose, Humanism and the Renaissance, Modernism, and Poscolonialism. She explores the intersections of political thought, identity, and exile in various forms of narrative and poetry.
Marinus Yong is an Associate Professor of Translation and Literary Studies. He has over 60 publications to his credit. His interest in poetry has yielded fruit in the publication of two collections of poems in English, Thirsty Land (2011) and Thorny Crown: Corona virus poems (2020). Some of his poems have appeared in anthologies. He is a member of the University French Teachers’ Association of Nigeria (UFTAN) and is the Secretary of the Board of Trustees of Alliance française, Enugu, Enugu State, Nigeria.