With AiW Guests: Chris Abani, Kwame Dawes, Joanne Hichens, and Hilda Twongyeirwe.
Edited by: Ashawnta Jackson and Jessica Powers for #readingAfrica 2024 (Catalyst Press).
Jackson and Powers: Anthologies offer readers the opportunity to explore multiple writers — their voices, experiences, and styles. And, as Hilda Twongyeirwe points out here, they can operate as communities for writers and readers. But, as all the editors in this interview illustrate, anthologies are a more complex genre than many of us recognize.
Not simply a way to gather the “best of” writing or the “classic” writing of any given demographic, not simply a way to shine light on a theme by providing multiple perspectives from a variety of writers on the same idea — both important and time-honored aspects of the genre — they can also, problematically, be reductive, a way that individual writers can be reduced to a singular poem, essay, or story. Readers may engage with only a select work or two from any given writer in a collection, not going on to explore that writer’s fuller body of work.
Even given this, anthologies are valuable for what they open up and as points of reference, propelling readers to further exploration. For #ReadingAfricaWeek 2024, we — Ashwanta Jackson and Jessica Powers (Catalyst Press) — asked four editors of prominent anthologies of African writing — of fiction and real-life stories, and poetry — for their thoughts about the value of anthologies, how they each operate as editors of collections that include a diverse array of writers, and why we need to read more of them…
Kwame Dawes is the author of multiple books of poetry and numerous other books of fiction, criticism, and essays. He teaches at the University of Nebraska and the Pacific MFA Program. He is Director of the African Poetry Book Fund and Artistic Director of the Calabash International Literary Festival.
Chris Abani is a novelist, poet, essayist, screenwriter and playwright. Born in Nigeria to an Igbo father and English mother, he grew up in Afikpo, Nigeria, received a BA in English from Imo State University, Nigeria, an MA in English, Gender and Culture from Birkbeck College, University of London and a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. He has resided in the United States since 2001. He is Board of Trustees Professor of English at Northwestern University.
Joanne Hichens reflects on life – the lighter side and the underbelly, with humour and compassion. As a child, books were her refuge, particularly those where good and evil fought it out till justice was served and the world was once more in order. She is constantly aware of this delicate equilibrium. As author, she writes crime, memoir, and is currently working on a collection of short stories. She is the editor of multiple anthologies by African writers.
Hilda Twongyeirwe is an editor and has also published creative and non-fiction works in different anthologies and Journals. She is currently the Executive Director of FEMRITE – Uganda Women Writers Association. She is a recipient of 2018 National Medal and 2018 Uganda Registration Services Bureau (URSB) Award, both for her contribution to Uganda’s Literary Heritage and Women Emancipation. She is a member of The Graca Machel Trust Women in Media Network, Action for Development, and FEMRITE.
Catalyst Press: Can you each talk a bit about the anthologies you publish/have published?
Kwame Dawes: I have been compiling anthologies for many years, so much so that I would have to consult my CV to actually offer a list. But what I can say is that I have a complex relationship to anthologies, especially poetry anthologies. I have always found them to be useful as introductions to whole bodies or movements of work — they offer sometimes a retrospective and an intellectual way of curating some concept that has emerged in the work that writers have been doing. Often, an anthology is a way to ensure the preservation of what has been done over years and that has not had attention or that should not be forgotten. And anthologies can be quite aggressive in asserting an ideology, a thesis or a concept. I remember when I put together Wheel and Come Again, an anthology of reggae poems, the impulse came from my research at the time of proposing a reggae aesthetic as an important way to understand contemporary Jamaican literation. I had written theoretical works on reggae lyrics and poetics, and I wanted to somehow argue that even if they were not aware of it, reggae was in fact shaping Caribbean poetry and poetry from around the world. Hence Wheel and Come Again.
In South Carolina, I sought to fill an absence of attention to poetry from that state by being involved with several anthologies. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of the South Carolina Poetry Initiatives was our cottage-industry work of producing modest anthologies of work following workshops, retreats or other moments of poetic expression. It was a way to commemorate the moment, and to give writers tangible evidence of their place as poets and their entry into the publishing world. In the UK, in the early 2000s, I was commissioned to edit an anthology of new Black British poetry. Rather than embark on a standard call for new work, I went on a well-organized tour of the UK to conduct workshops with Black British poets, who then produced work that I suggested they submit for consideration for the anthology which was called Red.
I have also been very much an editor of other, more conventional kinds of anthologies — those that are seeking to create canonical notions of a body of work. These are interventions against silencing and neglect, but they are also seeking to ensure that schools and universities that are seeking to teach work by Black writers, African writers, Caribbean writers, have substantive anthologies that offer a strong and well-curated overview of work from regions, cultures, movements, etc.
I say my disposition to anthologies is complex and it is. While anthologies can be good doorways to engaging the work of poets, they can also create a circumstance in which poets are reduced to a handful of poems — those that are anthologized — leaving a decidedly false sense of who the poets are. I have often asked students if they have read such and such a writer — say, Robert Frost. They say, Sure, they have. Then I ask them what book of Frost have they read. I think you can imagine the answer.
Here is the thing: I am glad they have read the poems in anthologies — it is something. But no one would claim to have read Shakespeare or Hemingway purely on the basis of having read some scenes from Hamlet or a short story by Hemingway. Schools collude with this system of not assigning volumes of poems by poets (with rare exceptions) for courses, but using selections, anthologies. I was fortunate to have been in school in Jamaica where I was assigned the only volume of poems by G.M. Hopkins, Elliot’s The Four Quartets, etc. rather than survey anthologies.
So I consider anthologies to be necessary, but I have made it a mission to keep pushing whole volumes of poems by writers. In many ways, the African Poetry Book Fund Chapbook series emerged in the manner that it did during a conversation between Chris Abani and myself. We knew right away that what we did not want to do was publish another anthology of African poetry. We knew that what poets needed was the chance to enter the publishing world of book publication.
Chris had already started to do this work with his Black Goat series with Akashic Books. I had been doing similar work with a chapbook and book series in South Carolina and the Calabash chapbook series in Jamaica. We agreed to this idea of a chapbook boxset because we felt it offered two critical things — ample space for emerging poets to showcase their work, and the value of their individual ISBN for their title — making this a solid publication credit. It imposed a mechanism to respond to the ambition of the poets in the entire enterprise of African poetry. The boxset, then, is a kind of anthology series, but it is clearly a hybrid. This effort is the balance that interventions, like the ones we are doing, require. I have just made a deal with the University of Nebraska Press and the Calabash International Literary Festival Trust to begin a Caribbean poetry imprint/series modeled on the African Poetry Book Fund, which will be the Calabash Caribbean Poetry Book Series. This will be driven by similar principles of access to poetry and considerations for the publishing careers of authors. Anthologies, single volume books, it’s a necessary dance.
Chris Abani: I’ve published one anthology, Lagos Noir by Akashic Books. I haven’t really been drawn to them — I have mostly been drawn to series. I’ve known Kwame for a long time and we share very similar aesthetic positions, and so I found myself nodding along as I read.
However, when we do diverge, the differences are wide, and I think that’s what makes us a strong pair. Of course, the mutual respect doesn’t hurt. We both share deep reservations about anthologies. For me, it is complicated because it seems to me that anthologies are often reserved for subjects that are seen as niche, but that should still be given attention. For me, poetry is not niche, or to be relegated to the periphery of literature. We’ve often heard booksellers, fellow professors, and librarians refer to literature as separate from poetry, presumably because of the supremacy we have assigned to fiction. The natural consequence of this is that to cover such a wide subject area (because poetry is also so varied in approach, manifesto, aesthetics, and period that entire schools have grown up around each of these) you can never cover a substantive scope of work.
This is further complicated when you add a vast geographical area with thousands of distinct languages, not dialects, for example Nigeria alone has over 500 plus languages, each with distinct cultures. The pressure of the anthology to achieve robust signification, representation, curation and archive is severely compromised. So, you can see why, when we can, over time, we have chosen to edit series of books because of the sense of the cartography and the main impact, not the curation of niche spaces, but to mainstream the genre and the complexity of these home cultures. We seek to curate an ongoing living archive that can be passed on and maintained beyond the moment. We want an internally reflexive movement that is as diverse as the continent. That’s what I would say about anthologies.
Joanne Hichens: I am the curator and anthologizer for Short.Sharp.Stories, an annual short story competition that looks for original South African short stories. We believe in the diversity of voice of South African writers, and we showcase the short stories of established as well as emerging writers. We’ve published eight anthologies to date: Bloody Satisfied, Adults Only, Incredible Journey, Die Laughing, Trade Secrets, Instant Exposure, Fluid: the Freedom to Be, and One Life which has just recently hit the shelves. We’ve basically covered every genre.
Hilda Twongyeirwe: I work with FEMRITE, the Women Writers Association in Uganda. Anthologies dominate our publishing profile, probably because we are a community of writers and so we write together most of the time, as a community of women writers and as a community of Ugandan writers. We have published short story anthologies and true-life stories by Ugandan and other African women writers, and poetry and paintings anthologies by Ugandan writers (both men and women).
We have one poetry anthology, which has a few songs as well, which was quite experimental. Most of our anthologies are by open call, not given a theme because they are mostly to celebrate our learning together as a community and so we prefer not to limit the contributors. It is only a few anthologies, especially the true-life stories, which bear specific themes. Faming Ashes by Ugandan women and No Time to Mourn by women of South Sudan, for instance, speak to peace, conflict and displacement. And because we wanted as many voices as possible, we curated the book to have fiction and non-fiction stories, photographs, poetry and paintings. This Bridge Called Woman, co-written by Ugandan women from Sacramento, USA and Uganda, speaks to cultural values and wisdom. Beyond the Dance speaks to Female Genital Mutilation. Currently we are working on the first thematised poetry anthology on climate justice and mental health, which is a collaboration with students from six universities.
Writing from Africa is such a broad category (one of the things we stress during #ReadingAfrica Week), but each of your collections has an emphasis on African writing. There is a sense that the continent does shape the writing. When selecting pieces, do you look for those that capture that spirit?
Kwame Dawes: Oh no, I would not call it “a spirit”. I am not sure what that would be. So here is the thing that I believe has guided us always: we have a deep trust in the imagination, the wisdom, the genius, the impulses of the poet and the poet writing in society. We add to this trust a deep love for the poets writing in Africa. Why? Because we truly believe that allowed to write, allowed to give voice, they will throw their hearts and talents into the task of chronicling the sentiment and sensibility of our time. This has always happened, and this will continue to happen.
So we depend on the writers to teach us what is happening outside of their windows, we depend on them to help us know where their imagination is, what they see, what hauntings have come through them from the past, the future and the present moment. We depend on the women poets to step into the fray and reteach us the meaning of the world from their eyes, we depend on these voices to help us understand what their art is doing. As editors, we pay far greater attention to the extent to which their ambition, as expressed in their work, is being matched by their industry and craft, and this is how we weigh these decisions. We also probe and push, work hard to open the path to possibility by finding ways to expose these poets to the legacies that are theirs — from their ancestors, from the fellow poets, from the colonial and imperialist forces that stole things from them.
So, you will see from what I have said here is that we are not in search of “a spirit”, just of work. If there is a spirit that we welcome, it has less to do with their work but to do with how they live as poets in community, and that does not come from our selections, but comes from the modeling of a community of creative energy that we hope to engender, encourage, and celebrate.
Joanne Hichens: We need to be careful not to lump all ‘African’ nations together – although ‘Africans’ are resident in the same continent, and that is a tie that binds, we need to be cognizant of the vast diversity of African nations – Egypt, Nigeria, DRC, and South Africa, just as an example, all have different cultures and laws and so one can’t come up with a common definition.
I look for the spirit of South Africa: South Africa, because of the unique history, is really a melting pot of all cultures, and of course we still deal with the damage of apartheid. That unique backstory makes for the kind of short story that has a particular sensibility that can perhaps only be South African. The landscape is ours, and with the array of eleven official languages, there is so much to work with. It is one of the most diverse nations of the world, with the most celebrated and revered democratic constitution which protects the rights of all, including freedom of speech, and this makes it a beacon for other nations.
Hilda Twongyeirwe: This has got me laughing, asking myself, ‘Do I look for stories that capture the African spirit?’ No, I do not think so. I will take a good story, a story that makes me feel; this is not contrived. I will take a story that tells the story of the space it is told from. If it is genuinely told, the reader will feel it. It will carry that spirit without declaring it is carrying it. And yes, we are talking about the African spirit but what’s crucial is the human spirit, the human experience, because that is what connects the reader to any story. A story that does not force itself on the reader but one that offers a voice of hope, a voice of resilience, a voice of alternatives, of compassion, of a future reimagined. I will look for a story that needs to be told and not a story that is being forced to be told. The story that needs to be told will carry that spirit I will be looking for without looking.
And then there’s the question that is almost undefinable—what is that spirit?
Kwame Dawes: Exactly.
Chris Abani: So when we talk about spirit, and I’m not saying that that’s the question you’re asking, but for me, every mention of spirit around Africa and African intellectual and creative output rankles, because it feels like a throwback to the ill-advised position taken by the Negritude movement, which positioned the West as intellectually rigorous, and Africa as the less intellectual but more soulful younger brother.
First, we are Africans, Kwame and I, and so, for whatever that generic term means, we are invested in and products of that continent. That means we are not pursuing something as amorphous as a spirit; we are seeking to create a solid archive that will sustain the way that the archives produced in Timbuktu have lasted over 700 years, so that’s one thing so we’re fully aware of the depth of sophistication and creative and intellectual rigor of the poets. And, as Kwame says, we rely on them to do their thing with as little and editorial interference with their style. Instead we apply mostly questions and insights to push their rigor.
Joanne Hichens: Again, I’d hone in on South Africa: here the spirit is of free speech, of diversity, of a landscape that is unique. Perhaps if one looks at Africa in general, it is diversity, energy, the fundamentals of the [global] South versus the North, this feeling that Europe is staid, America is corrupt, Russia is a warmonger – putting this all in very simple terms – and that Africa still has something untapped and exciting, primal and visceral, to offer.
Hilda Twongyeirwe: Maybe it is that that lies at the centre of who we are as a people, experiencing life together and sharing these experiences through our stories; written or spoken or just silently. The African spirit is experiential. It is in everyday life and so should inevitably be interwoven in the everyday story
Kwame and/or Chris — the New-Generation African Poets Chapbook Box Set is a little different from a traditional anthology. When selecting the chapbooks to include, do you try to make them a collective work somehow — thematically, geographically, stylistically?
Kwame Dawes: Not at all. Again, the work dictates the content of the anthology. Our introductions often hint at a certain coherence to each anthology, but you must understand that these introductions are written after the fact of solicitation, selection and so on. We are merely trying to introduce this gift that we are about to share in these beautiful boxsets. So, we start to look for points of intersection, points of departure, and so on. We are absolutely committed to selecting individual chapbooks on their own terms, and with no regard for the other chapbooks we select. This is very important.
But I should explain as briefly as possible how we approach the chapbook boxsets. Each year, there is a moment when Siwar Massannat, our amazing Managing Editor, lets me know that it is time for us to start our process for the chapbooks. The first step is for us to reach out to our growing network of consultants from across the continent and the diaspora, editors, writers, festival directors, book promoters, literary culture workers, publishers, critics, and scholars, asking them to tell us of any emerging poets to whom we should be paying attention. We ask for as much information as they can muster, from a name, to contact details, web links, and so on. We depend especially heavily on authors we have published in the series and elsewhere to send us names. We also, during the year, pay attention to social media and other spaces to see if names are coming through that we might want to be thinking about. Finally, we have ensured that in the two major emerging writer contests that we run (The Sillerman and the Evaristo Prize), we ask the readers and judges to tag any work that they feel might lend itself to a chapbook-length publication. We include those on the list of poets for first consideration.
Once we have gotten responses from our various sources, we then start to do some research on these poets. We ask basic questions like whether they have already published a full-length volume, where they are located (so we can contact them), and what work of theirs might be available online. We then start reading, doing more background work and considering the comments that have accompanied these recommendations. Typically, this process leads us to forty to sixty names that seem to make sense. At this point, we write to these individuals and invite them to submit a chapbook length manuscript of their work. We give a two-week deadline. This seems draconian, but we have found that this allows us to narrow the field to those who are ready in practical terms to be considered for publication. Normally, we get a good response for this request, and the typical submissions amount to forty to fifty manuscripts. We then start to read.
We are, though, interested first and foremost in the power and effectiveness of the work. The coherence of the volume, their care for selection and their care for the artform. But we do carry in our considerations matters of regions and/or countries from whence the work comes. We want to have a very healthy balance that favors poets living in Africa, even though we are aware of the peculiar fact of what migration is — meaning, people are both home and away at the same time. We are sensitive to historical silences that have to be broken in terms of our representation, and we desire range, variety in style, obsession and so on. Yet, always, it is the work that trumps everything. This should be clear from the various boxsets we have published.
Once we have selected the 8-13 manuscripts for inclusion, we contact the authors by sending them the fully edited manuscripts, and then embark on a period of collaboration with the authors to arrive at the manuscript that does the best justice to their visions, ambitions, and their poems. We, of course, stay in touch with the poets whose work is not included, sending them notes on their work sometimes, and in some cases encouraging them to consider our over the transom book series submissions.
Chris Abani: Kwame has said it perfectly.
Hilda, can you tell us a bit about Femrite? And since your focus is on just one country, can you tell us a bit about Ugandan writing/the writing community? It has filled a space that wasn’t there before in the literary world. What does that space read like?
Hilda Twongyeirwe: Although FEMRITE is an initiative of Uganda women writers, her programmes go beyond women to male writers as well because we recognise the fact that both women and male writers suffer similar challenges sometimes, such as the poor infrastructure to support writing in the country, and the lack of resources and skills to grow their writing. Our programmes include writing development activities, book publishing, promotion of Ugandan and African literature, promotion of reading, awareness creation around women’s stories, and much more. Some of our special activities include, among others, the writing residencies/retreats and workshops, the writers club, author of the month, book club, writers caravan, poetry poster project, public dialogues, book forums, women empowerment forums, networking, and wellness activities.
Although FEMRITE’s focus during its formative years was only Uganda, the organization now has a regional focus looking at both Ugandan and other African women, because we recognise that we face similar challenges as we seek to write and be read. We also believe in building networks and a sisterhood that serve us as women on the continent.
Recently we refocused our strategic mission to include the region because it is important to participate in growing the region in order for us to grow and excel as writers. The literary community in Uganda is quite small and so the more we support each other as a region, the better for all of us. It is easy to jump on a bus, for instance, and go to Nairobi or Kigali, to support a festival and create more vibe than it would be to raise an air ticket for London Book Fair. Investing in the region is therefore important.
Uganda, like the rest of the region, has outgrown the challenges of the turbulent sixties where writers were very few and running into exile. Although Uganda’s writing community is not a very large one, it is a vibrant one, with festivals, book clubs, book markets, and writers groups which keep the community busy. From 6th to 8th December, Goethe Zentrum in Uganda held a 3-day LitFest. At the opening dialogue, David Kaiza who was chairing the session, applauded FEMRITE for her contribution to building Uganda’s literary community. It is not far-fetched, therefore, to say that FEMRITE is one of the initiatives that has contributed immensely to building Uganda’s literary landscape. Before the birth of FEMRITE, there were very few published Ugandan women. Today FEMRITE has, especially through anthologies, published over one hundred women and men, some established, others budding writers. There are several initiatives run by women who are closely linked to FEMRITE as members or mentees along their career path. These include notable writers such as Goretti Kyomuhendo who runs African Writers Trust, Beatrice Lamwaka who runs International PEN Uganda chapter, Beverley Nambozo of Babishai Niwe Foundation, and Doreen Baingana of Mawazo Africa Writing Institute.
Today the Ugandan writing community has grown with other initiatives such as Writivism – led by Bwesigye bwa Mwesigire; Kitara Nation – led by Kagayi Ngobi; and several spoken word initiatives. In terms of book production, there is a lot of self-publishing, either to bypass the rigorous editorial processes of mainstream and independent book publishers or because the publishers are not able to absorb everything that the writers are churning out. This has its advantages and disadvantages but at least there are more books coming out of the space.
There is the issue of Artificial intelligence as well. Whether the writers will escape unscathed or not, one may not tell now. But some ambitious budding writers may easily be tempted to create with AI, which would then take them off the road to creative excellence to AI addicts.
What kinds of stories does Femrite seek to tell?
Hilda Twongyeirwe: FEMRITE seeks to tell stories that need to be told; stories that must be told. FEMRITE creation was inspired by the absence of women’s stories from society’s mainstream published stories. Women’s stories remain at the centre of FEMRITE publishing. We seek stories that will inspire our daughters and inspire society to be a better place; stories that challenge readers and offer new thoughts and even stories that will inspire laughter because there is so much pain in the world.
But sometimes we shall tell stories that society will fear to read because they cannot deal with the story of their community. For instance, Beyond the Dance is one story that many people have read and have said, “I can complete that book.” Yet we have had many girls escape FGM because of reading the stories. For us such is the story that must be told; the story that will cause positive change. Uganda, Africa suffers the single story. Femrite seeks to tell stories that challenge such stereotypes.
Joanne, most of your anthology work is through Tattoo Press, an imprint that you started. What was the impetus for starting the press, and why have you focused on anthologies?
Joanne Hichens: I started the press in order to publish the short story anthologies and hopefully other short fiction. I am however, focusing on the anthologies. I’d love to publish more but financially it’s not viable. This is a lament heard from all quarters – publishing is an expensive business, and short stories in particular are a hard sell. But we keep at it! Tattoo is a sort of music, a marching, a rhythmic drumming – and so I keep the beat.
What challenges do you face when trying to select the works you ultimately include in each anthology?
Kwame Dawes: The greatest challenge is coping with the fact that almost always there is really good work that we can’t include because of the constraints of space. This is always tough, and we understand that lack of inclusion can exaggerate into something, almost violence, what is, in fact, a matter of normal limitations and constraints. APBF has always sought to keep opening up other avenues for the work of poets which may meet them at different stages of their development. But not including some work can be difficult.
Joanne Hichens: I look for competent writing, diversity and originality, interesting use of language. I want range, to satisfy many readers. I always say that if a reader can enjoy ten of the twenty stories included, that’s a win. So often we have to choose among great stories that perhaps have similar themes. It’s difficult to say no to some really wonderful stories. I also like to include a range of authors, and introduce new authors in each anthology – which means only publishing any author at most a couple of times. We also include literary tales and the more commercial, so it can be a challenge to balance the stories. I hope, every time, for a collection that is contemporary and, above all, excellent reading.
Hilda Twongyeirwe: Each anthology will present its own challenges but it has been mainly to do with balancing of contributors. It could be more men with better pieces or more contributors from the same region or same age blanket yet one needs to balance. Recently I faced a challenge of AI, where some contributors clearly used AI. It was extremely exhausting weeding out AI. Yet some editors will say that it is okay to use AI. The other practical challenge is where in the editing process the contributors reject edits or they delay to respond, and thus cause unnecessary delays in publishing process.
Have you found it difficult to find new voices?
Chris Abani: I would say on the contrary the difficulty is not with finding new voices and work, or even with finding work of startling clarity and unusual points of view and, say, strong social engagement. The real problem is a limitation of scope that our budget forces on us. It is remarkable how much work we have put out of APBF in 10 years. I would say over 100 books and counting, maybe more, maybe 150. These include the chapbooks, of course, and that means not only are we bringing in first-time writers, some through chapbooks, some through the Sillerman series, but we’re also reintroducing and re-establishing mid-career poets, who have slipped out of public consciousness. But imagine then what we could do with double, triple, or even more money at our disposal, a bigger budget, so to speak. So, if there’s anyone out there who is a potential philanthropist and is reading this, help! We would really appreciate it.
Joanne Hichens: We have a plethora of new voices and writers who have the most intriguing stories. Our local writing talent continues to thrill: the writing, the stories, our sheer diversity, means we are able to share truly original tales; and united by our bond of living and working in South Africa, the stories are uniquely South African. I would say the difficulty is that writers need to practice, to hone their skills and their craft. One can spot a unique voice, but writing in English as a second language means the writers often need time to really comes to terms with fluency. I suggest to my writers that they read, read, read, and in this way assimilate the lessons of writing in English.
Hilda Twongyeirwe: Not quite. Because we always run writing workshops for upcoming writers, we always have interesting new voices coming up. Instead, our challenge is nurturing new voices and then they are picked up by the bigger publishers. At the same time, that is good because we would not want these new voices to get stuck with small independent publishers.
What can publishing at large do to spotlight new voices?
Joanne Hichens: The short story format is perfect for new and emerging writers to showcase their writing and their voice. So publishing more of this kind of anthology is a positive action. Many publishers hold free workshops for aspiring writers, in order for writers to grow their skills. I think too, the emphasis should be on the fact that writers need to practice, as in any other profession. The idea of once-off-wonders needs to be put to bed. Publishers could pay better, there could be grant schemes for new writers; the National Arts Council of South Africa helps writers, but we need something more sustainable – a financial support network for aspiring writers.
Hilda Twongyeirwe: Community is one space I have seen to nurture new voices. Publishers should therefore support the growth of writing communities. In Uganda for instance, Dr. James Tumusiime of Fountain Publishers supports writers’ community as his catchment are for writers and editors. He understands it holistically as an industry.
When you’re selecting work for your collections, what are you looking for?
Joanne Hichens: Apart from stories that interpret the theme in unusual ways, what do we hope for with each new edition of Short.Sharp.Stories? We’re looking for strong narrative, fresh writing, a rhythm of language that carries us along from the first sentence to the last. We want to be enthralled by character, and rooted in setting, right from the first few sentences piquing our interest, and placing us in the action, in medias res. Of course we want to celebrate language and the elements of style. We know too, that newer writers will be less proficient than those who’ve plied their trade for their proverbial ten thousand hours, and so we are also on the hunt for the illusive ‘voice’ that captures our interest, that ‘voice’ of a storyteller, one that somehow stands out.
Hilda Twongyeirwe: I am looking for the story that will not describe something in Kampala to be as white as snow. Because I have climbed mountains and seen snow on Mt Rwenzori and Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Elgon, I have an advantage of knowing snow. But that does not mean I would appreciate snow in Kampala. I love Shakespeare and that is what we all grew up reading in Ugandan school but what I look for is a story that does not imitate the western literature that we read and continue to read, or the cartoons that dominate our TV stations.
Do you have an all-time favorite anthology that you return to often? A classic, or a book that can be held up as an example of brilliant anthology-making?
Kwame Dawes: I think I have different reasons for my pleasure in anthologies. As a teacher, and as someone who is often trying to make sense of new bodies of literature, I appreciate anthologies that function essentially as reference texts — works that do the work of offering me a starting point for delving into bodies of literature with which I am not familiar. I recently saw a series of anthologies published in South Africa that had an extremely limited run, but that were just beautifully curated and especially well bound and designed. These were themed anthologies — one of love and another on struggle, I think. I was drawn to the subject matter and the opportunity to see poets writing about a subject. This is why I have enjoyed recent anthologies by Kevin Young on music or food, for instance.
I also remember spending a great deal of time reading and re-reading a short series of Jamaican anthologies of the forties and fifties that featured Jamaican poets of the period. Thirty years away from their publication, I really was moved by the reminder of the ambitions of writers at the time that seem to affirm my own ambitions and dreams for my own work. I found this sense of legacy and tradition extremely important. So, no “all-time favorite”, but just a few that remind me of the principles that I value in anthologies.
I must say that I do think that the book, Modern Sudanese Poetry: An Anthology, edited by Adil Babikir that the African Poetry Book Fund published a few years ago, remains one of those volumes that I have found to have been beautifully organized and that contains just stunning poems in translation. It is certainly a favorite of mine. Similar things can be said for the Patricia Jabbeh Wesley edited, Breaking the Silence: Anthology of Liberian Poetry. The two volumes share a single thing — they are groundbreaking and engaged in the rupturing of a long silence.
Chris Abani: Kwame speaks for me on this.
Joanne Hichens: An all-time favourite? I have many favourites. I don’t think I would choose one above any other. I probably have a soft spot for the very first Short.Sharp.Stories anthology, Bloody Satisfied, as it’s a collection of crime fiction, and at heart, I’m a crime fiction lover. I’d love to put together a ‘Best Of’ Short.Sharp.Stories. That would be fun! And it would be my favourite!
Follow Short.Sharp.Stories on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ShortSharpStories
Read more about the titles at: joannehichens.com
Hilda Twongyeirwe: I have more than one anthology that I go back to. But to say which ones is to say that one child is more liked than the other. And so as a parent, you hold all your children and highlight what you love about each.
With thanks to Ashawnta Jackson and Jessica Powers, who brought this interview to us as part of Catalyst Press’ #readingAfrica week, Dec 1-7, 2024…
Catalyst Press launched #readingAfrica week in 2017. Aimed at celebrating the depth and width of African writing in all its forms, the annual celebration began as an online social media event involving multiple publishers, booksellers, librarians, educators, and any reader anywhere who wanted to celebrate African writing, and has evolved to include multiple live events with authors, essays, roundups and interviews like this one appearing in Africa In Words. Though #readingAfricaweek is particularly promoted the first full week of December, we definitely celebrate and want to promote #readingAfrica year round, hence this interview, which is definitely not published during the annual drive. Come celebrate with us year round, posting your favorite books, films, music, essays, short stories, poems, and more with the hashtag #readingAfrica.