This week is the finale of our writing as activism series at the 2024 Pa Gya! Literary Festival. It has been such a pleasure bringing the works and words of these writers to a wider audience. It has been a wonderful multi-generational compilation of wisdom across genres. Joining us this week is Ivana Akotowaa Ofori, a Ghanaian storyteller known also by the alias, “The Spider Kid.” She is a weaver of words in many forms, including fiction, non-fiction and spoken-word poetry. Akotowaa has been nominated for various awards for her prose writing. Her work is included in the Flash Fiction Ghana anthology, Kenkey for Ewes and Other Very Short Stories, and the Writivism anthology, And Morning Will Come.

She is also included in the Africa Risen Anthology 2022 with her short story, “Exiles of Witchery”. Akotowaa’s debut novella, The Year of Return (2023) has been published in the US with Android Press and in West Africa with Smartline Publishers.

Writing aside, Akotowaa spends much of her time looking for excuses to make everything purple and this imaginative, playful spirit definitely shines through our conversation.

Where to find Akotowaa?
On the Ceiling
On Akotowaa’s Blog
On LinkedIn
On Instagram
On X
On Facebook

What’s Akotowaa watching?
Dr. Who
Sherlock

What’s Akotowaa reading?
The Color Purple by Alica Walker
How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair
Saltwater Slavery by Stephanie E. Smallwood
Manchester Happened by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
Nightbloom by Peace Adzo Medie

Other topics of interest:
Black Girls Glow and the KOSHKA Sound Residency
Burma Camp, Accra
About Roald Dahl
Ananasesem
About Kente Cloth

Special Guest: Ivana Akotowaa Ofori.

We are nearing the end of our Writing As Activism series @ the 2024 Pa Gya! Literary Festival in Accra. This week, Ghanaian writer and editor winning acclaim as a children's author, poet, broadcaster and novelist, Nii Ayikwei Parkes joins the conversation. Winner of multiple international awards including the ACRAG (Arts Critics and Reviewers Association of Ghana) award, his novel Tail of the Blue Bird won France's two major prizes for translated fiction – Prix Baudelaire and Prix Laure Bataillon – in 2014. Nii Ayikwei is the founder of flipped eye publishing, a leading small press; serves on the boards of World Literature Today and the AKO Caine Prize; and was chair of judges for the 2020 Commonwealth Prize. Translated in multiple languages, he has also written for National Geographic, Financial Times, the Guardian and Lonely Planet. His most recent books are The Ga Picture Alphabet and Azúcar, a novel. Currently Producer of Literature and Talks at Brighton Festival, he is also author of two collections of poetry The Makings of You (2010) and The Geez (2020), both published by Peepal Tree Press.

In this conversation, we journey with Nii Ayikwei through his works, his entreprenuership, his love for food and rum, and much more!
See Nii in converation at Pa Gya! here.

Where to find Nii Ayikwei?
On LinkedIn
On Instagram
On Facebook
On X
On YouTube
On Tik Tok
On BlueSky

What’s Nii Ayikwei listening to?
Gene Noble
Blues Man Robert Cray
The Roots
Cody Chesnutt + The Roots
and Headphone Masterpiece

Nii’s Pan-African Activism essential reading list:
Howard W. French, Born In Blackness
Mongo Beti’s, The Poor Christ of Bomba
Ama Atta Aidoo’s, No Sweetness Here
Franz Fanon, Black Skin, White Mask
You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town, Zoë Wicomb
Kofi Awoonor, This Earth My Brother

Other topics of interest:
Historic Jamestown, Accra
Oto Blohum, Old Accra
North Kaneshie
Thornton Heath, UK
About Courttia Newland
Learn more about Nii’s uncle Frank Kobina Parkes
Nkyinkyim in the Adinkra
On Ghana’s Chop Bars
About Spanish-Caribbean Rum
About Rhum Agricole

Special Guest: Nii Ayikwei Parkes.

This week writing as activism is taking us to a land with a long history of activist thought ans action - Ireland. Born and raised in Nigeria, Dagogo Hart migrated to Ireland at an early age to complete his studies and now calls it home along with his young family. He is a poet, playwright, and spoken word artist whose words have wowed audiences from bar basements to electric picnic stages. He started performing in Dublin in 2016 in open mics and poetry slams, which saw him win the Slam Sunday grand slam and become an All Ireland poetry slam finalist. Since then he has performed for festivals like Electric Picnic, St. Patricks, Dublin Fringe, Drogheda literary festival, Cuirt International Poetry Festival, and First fortnight. He is one-third of the collective WeAreGriot - a poetry collective that curates art events around poetry. His personal works include, The Home Project (a series of poetry films), RedBeard Paddy (a poetry short film), Mmanwu (a play in the 2023 Dublin Fringe Festival), See True (a spoken word variety show) and Boy Child (a spoken-word play), the last two co-written with FeliSpeaks, Talkatives; a hip-hop and poetry slam as part of WeAreGriot. As you’ll learn in our conversation and glean from his works, his poetry is inspired by his hometown in Lagos, Nigeria, and his experience since moving to Ireland.
See Dagogo on stage at Pa Gya! 2024 performing his words here and in discussion about his works here.

Where else to find Dagogo?
WeAreGriot
On LinkedIn
On Instagram
On X

What’s Dagogo watching?
Fences (film)
Shōgun (series)

What’s Dagogo listenining to?
Alice Smith sings “I Put a Spell on You”

Other topics of interest:
Surulere, Nigeria
Tralee, Ireland
Cork, Ireland
Visit Dublin, Ireland and the Clondalkin Tower
The Abbey Theatre and The Gate Theatre
Port Harcourt Tourist Beach
More on Chucky Ar la Inshallah
Where are the Irish language speaking towns in Ireland?

Special Guest: Dagogo Hart.

Click the and check out Vamba’s Pa Gya! session centering his latest book The Emperor's Son.

Where to find Vamba?
On LinkedIn
On Instagram
On Facebook
On X

Vamba’s essential Pan-African activism reading list:
[The Radience of the King)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Radiance_of_the_King) by Camara Laye and excerpt to the introduction by Toni Morrison

Other topics of interest:
Who was Samori Touré?
Kolahun, Liberia
Liberia’s First Civil War
About Edward Wilmot Blyden, father of Pan-Africanism
About the Gulf War
Senegalese filmmaker, Ousmane Sembène
About Groningen
Why lekker is so sweet…
The Comet by W.E.B Dubois

Next up in our Writing as Activism series, this week’s episode, recorded at the 2024 Pa Gya! festival (in case you are wondering, this is the session taking place during our interview, features Nigerian poet and children’s book author, Aduke Gomez. Aduke embraced writing in the past decade after a career in law and finance. She now utilises her legal and advisory skills to assist in business and creative development. Commencing her career in legal practice with the law firm of Udo Udoma & Belo-Osagie, she later worked for many years in various leadership roles within Ecobank Nigeria Ltd and Leadway Pensure PFA. She is regularly called to speak and moderate on topics related to her interest in history and culture and these have included sessions at Cornell University; The Institute of Africa and Diaspora Studies at the University of Lagos; the Lagos State Record and Archive Bureau; the annual conference of the Lagos Studies Association; the Ake Festival; and the Lagos Book and Art Festival (LABAF) amongst others.

Her published collection of poems have featured as festival books for both the LABAF and the Ake Festival. And her children's books have also featured at previous editions of LABAF and Akada Children's Book Festival.
She is currently the Chair of the Steering Committee of Art4Life - an initiative of the Lagos State Ministry of Health established to introduce art and the practice of art into the entire healthcare process. She is a member of the Advisory Board of Open House Lagos as well as the Advisory Board of Lagos Biennial. She volunteers on the Board of Child Life Line - an NGO established for the welfare of street children.

In this conversation we not only get to know how Aduke pivoted into arts and public service, we also get to know more about her local in the context of her paternal ancestor's return from Brazil to Lagos. This speaks volume to the idea of activism as a way of being.

Where to find Aduke?
On LinkedIn
On Instagram
OnX

Who is on Aduke’s essential Pan-African reading list?
Mariama Bâ, in The Paris Review and more
Ama Atta Aidoo
Buchi Emecheta
Florence “Flora” Nwapa

Other topic of interest:
Return migration: Brazilians in Nigeria
The Nigerian Brazillian Project
About the Emanicapados of Brazil
Who are Tabom peoples?
Biola Alabi Media

Special Guest: Aduke Gomez.

The first Tuesday in November represents the official US election day. As polling evolves for higher participation and greater inclusion, most states offer early voting so millions have already cast thier votes. Throughout this year of elections across the globe, the build up to the two where I have a say, the United States and Ghana, has played a critical role in inspiring my most activist self to move the dial in different ways toward manifesting a new world. Coincidentally, this week on the podcast kicks off our Writing as Activism series in coordination with the Pa Gya! Literary Festival in Accra. Recorded live at the eighth installment of the festivaland in the days that followed, starting the panel, Writing as Activism: Ghanaian Voices and Pan-African Perspectives Across Genres, the conversation starts with a distinguished voices covering works of poetry, screenwriting, and nonfiction scholarship with:

Nicole Amarteifio is an acclaimed Ghanaian-American TV/film writer, director, and producer. She successfully launched the hit web series 'An African City’ - dubbed by CNN and the BBC as Africa’s answer to ‘Sex and the City’.

Returning Glocal Citizen, Nydia A. Swaby is a Black feminist artist, researcher and curator. Her practice engages archives, autoethnography, photography, the moving image, and the imagination to explore the gendered, diasporic and affective dimensions of Black being and becoming. In addition to curating artistic programmes, she creates visual narratives, research and performance texts. Nydia's first book, Amy Ashwood Garvey and the Future of Black Feminist Archives, was published by Lawrence Wishart in October 2024 as part of LW's Radical Black Women book series. She is also developing an artist film, Amy and Me in the Archive, which will be screened at the forthcoming Singapore International Photography Festival 2024.

And Poet Laureate of Jamaica, Kwame Dawes, author of numerous books of poetry and other books of fiction, criticism, and essays. His most recent collection is Sturge Town (Peepal Tree Press, UK 2023). Dawes is Professor of Literary Arts at Brown University. He teaches in the Pacific MFA Program and is the Series Editor of the African Poetry Book Series, Director of the African Poetry Book Fund, and Artistic Director of the Calabash International Literary Festival. He is a Chancellor for the Academy of American Poets and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Kwame Dawes is the winner of the prestigious Windham/Campbell Award for Poetry and was a finalist for the 2022 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. In 2022 Dawes was awarded the Order of Distinction Commander class by the Government of Jamaica. He is the Poet Laureate of Jamaica (2024-2027).

Click through to find out more about the Pa Gya! Literary Festival and the Writer’s Project Ghana and watch this and other festival panels at WPGTV.

Where to find Nicole?
On LinkedIn
On Instagram
On Facebook
On YouTube
On X

Where to find Kwame?
On LinkedIn
On Instagram
On X
On Facebook

Where to find Nydia?
On Glocal Citizens
On LinkedIn
On Instagram
On X

Other topics of interest and the Essential Pan-African Activism reading list coming soon!

*This audio recording has been edited for clarity from the original video recording.

Special Guests: Kwame Dawes, Nicole Amarteifio, and Nydia Swaby.

This week on the podcast, it’s another gem of a conversation that started at the Pa Gya! Literary Festival in Accra. My guest, Nigerian geologist turned journalist, Pelu Awofeso and I met in passing between his moderating sessions and communing with fellow writers. Pelu has made it his mission to promote local and international awareness of Nigerian arts, culture and traditional architecture, among other national assets, especially as they relate to or impact on domestic tourism. His writings have appeared in the Sunday Mirror, Lonely Planet,_ Kinfolk_,_ World Policy Journal_,_ Africa Today_,_ Africa in Words_, LOJEL, 234Next and The Sowetan, among many others. He has published five travel books all focused on his experiences traveling in Nigeria (and Africa).

A winner of the CNN/Multichoice African Journalists Awards in tourism reporting, in late 2019, Pelu was also named the Best Travel Journalist in Nigeria by Nigeria Travel Week. He is currently at work on a documentary on one of Africa's pioneer indigenous missionaries and first Black bishop of the Anglican Church, Samuel Ajayi Crowther (1809-91). When he is not traveling or writing, he divides his time between attending creative arts events in Lagos or working as a city guide to tourists.

Where to find Pelu?
On LinkedIn
On Instagram
On Twitter
On Facebook

What’s Pelu reading?
Steal Like an Artist: 10 Thing Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon
Dear Senthuran by Akwaeke Emezi

Other topics of interest:
Nigeria’s National Youth Services Corps
About Jos, Nigeria
Yoruba History Resource
On Pelu’s forthcoming project about Samuel Ajayi Crowther

Special Guest: Pelu Awofeso.

Eghosa’s second novel, Fine Boys, a coming-of-age novel, received wide acclaim in 2012 and was published in America by the Ohio University Press’ Modern African Writers Series in 2021. When he’s not writing or publishing, Eghosa teaches creative writing at the annual Chimamanda Adichie Creative Writing Workshop. Prior to launching into his literary career, he graduated with a medical degree from the University of Benin.

In this feel good and insightful conversation, Dr. Eghosa shares tips on how to work with publishers and about the how business of bringing books to the people promises to change the narrative on literacy, lifestyle and literary careers all over Africa.

Where to find Eghosa?
On LinkedIn
On Instagram
On Twitter
On Facebook

What’s Eghosa reading?
Truth is a Flightless Bird by Akbar Hussain
My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

What’s Eghosa watching?
Andor

Other topics of interest:
About Benin City
About the Benin Massacre
About Warri, Nigeria
Purple Hibiscus
David Hymar
Masobe Books
Nearly all the Men in Lagos are Mad
The Black Axe
Wole Soyinka
By Nike Campbell

Special Guest: Eghosa Imasuen.

As we ease into the last month of 2022, we're adding another country to our Glocal Citizens tour with a trip to Malawi. My guest this week is Malawian-American, Michelle Alipao Chikaonda. Michelle and I crossed paths in Accra at the sixth edition of the Pa Gya! Literary Festival. She is an award winning nonfiction writer, teacher and avid traveller. A graduate student at the University of East Anglia School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing studying biography and creative nonfiction, Michelle is currently based in the United Kingdom, and at the same time keeping an eye toward the next place she'll call "home."

Michelle has won the Literary Award for Narrative Nonfiction of the Tucson Festival of Books, the Stephen J. Meringoff Award for Nonfiction of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics and Writers, and the Archie D. and Bertha H. Walker Scholarship for writers of color from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. In 2015 she was nominated for the Pushcart Prize by the Oracle Fine Arts Review, and in 2020 she was longlisted for the inaugural Toyin Falola Prize for emerging African writers, and was published in the prize’s anthology, “In the Sands of Time” (2022). In addition to being a 2019 resident at The Seventh Wave’s Rhinebeck Residency, she is a Voices of Our Nations [VONA] Workshop fellow, a Tin House Summer Workshop alumna, and has presented at several Association of Writing and Writing Programs [AWP] conferences.

A contributing editor for nonfiction at Electric Literature, she is also currently published at Al Jazeera, The Globe and Mail, Catapult, the Broad Street Review, Business Insider, and Africa is A Country, among others.

Be sure to check out Michelle's website links so you can catch up on Michelle's works across platforms.

Where to find Michelle?
michellechikaonda.work
On Twitter
On Facebook
On Instagram

What's Michelle reading?
The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture by Gabor Maté MD with Daniel Maté
When the Body Says No: Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection by Gabor Maté MD
In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction by Gabor Maté MD

What's Michelle watching?
The Crown
From Scratch

Other topics of interest:
About Dedza, Malawi
About Zomba, Malawi
About the Lobolo System
Ngoni People
United World College
International Baccalaureate
Kusesa, sweeping
US Family Medical Leave Act
Song of Songs

Special Guest: Michelle Alipao Chikaonda.

As we ease into the last month of 2022, we're adding another country to our Glocal Citizens tour with a trip to Malawi. My guest this week is Malawian-American, Michelle Alipao Chikaonda. Michelle and I crossed paths in Accra at the sixth edition of the Pa Gya! Literary Festival. She is an award winning nonfiction writer, teacher and avid traveller. A graduate student at the University of East Anglia School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing studying biography and creative nonfiction, Michelle is currently based in the United Kingdom, and at the same time keeping an eye toward the next place she'll call "home."

Michelle has won the Literary Award for Narrative Nonfiction of the Tucson Festival of Books, the Stephen J. Meringoff Award for Nonfiction of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics and Writers, and the Archie D. and Bertha H. Walker Scholarship for writers of color from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. In 2015 she was nominated for the Pushcart Prize by the Oracle Fine Arts Review, and in 2020 she was longlisted for the inaugural Toyin Falola Prize for emerging African writers, and was published in the prize’s anthology, “In the Sands of Time” (2022). In addition to being a 2019 resident at The Seventh Wave’s Rhinebeck Residency, she is a Voices of Our Nations [VONA] Workshop fellow, a Tin House Summer Workshop alumna, and has presented at several Association of Writing and Writing Programs [AWP] conferences.

A contributing editor for nonfiction at Electric Literature, she is also currently published at Al Jazeera, The Globe and Mail, Catapult, the Broad Street Review, Business Insider, and Africa is A Country, among others.

Be sure to check out Michelle's website links so you can catch up on Michelle's works across platforms.

Where to find Michelle?
michellechikaonda.work
On Twitter
On Facebook
On Instagram

What's Michelle reading?
The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture by Gabor Maté MD with Daniel Maté
When the Body Says No: Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection by Gabor Maté MD
In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction by Gabor Maté MD

What's Michelle watching?
The Crown
From Scratch

Other topics of interest:
About Dedza, Malawi
About Zomba, Malawi
About the Lobolo System
Ngoni People
United World College
International Baccalaureate
Kusesa, sweeping
US Family Medical Leave Act
Song of Songs

Special Guest: Michelle Alipao Chikaonda.