Flora Nwapa, the groundbreaking Nigerian writer who put women’s lives in the spotlight
The seventh edition of our regular series of articles introducing the life and work of a great black writer.
Ralph Ellison, the legendary American writer who wrote about being an invisible black man
The sixth edition of our regular series of articles introducing the life and work of a great black writer.
Introducing… Malorie Blackman
“What strikes me as a brilliant book is a book that I totally get lost in when I’m reading it. I absolutely believe in the characters. I feel as they feel. So, when they’re hurting, I’m hurting. When they’re happy, I’m happy. And I just get lost in it. So, for me, when I’m writing, […]
Introducing…Claude McKay
Adventure-seasoned and storm-buffeted, I shun all signs of anchorage, because The zest of life exceeds the bound of laws. – Excerpt from poem entitled One Year After by Claude McKay These lines from one of his poems could almost be Claude McKay’s life motto. Born in Sunny Ville, Jamaica to a mother of Madagascan descent and a […]
Introducing… Buchi Emecheta
The third edition of our regular series of articles introducing the life and work of a great black writer.
Introducing… Courttia Newland
“Although I had been writing for many years as a ‘hobby’, I only turned to serious writing when I was 21. I had tried various avenues for making money and none of them had worked. I really wanted to build a music studio, so I decided to write a book and sell it, and then […]
Introducing… Octavia Butler
“Who am I? I am a forty-seven-year-old writer who can remember being a ten-year-old writer and who expects someday to be an eighty-year-old writer. I am also comfortably asocial—a hermit…. A pessimist if I’m not careful, a feminist, a Black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive.” – Octavia […]