It may be said that we become most aware of the bonds we share when those bonds are threatened; we realize how powerful they had been all along when they become strained. A woman misses her father most acutely when he is no longer around. A man in exile yearns with nostalgic ache for his home country. A marriage, like a manacle, chafes when love grows cold. All of these are fertile nodes of inquiry. But what of our untroubled bonds, what of the relations in which we are at ease? Here Achebe offers us an Igbo proverb by which we advance: “Where one thing stands, another will stand beside it.” There is something against which ease rests, something it stands beside. Literature must illuminate those as well. 

Two visual artists: Khaled Olufemi Mamah (Fhemy.raw) and Sambacor Konate (Le Jardin Jolof) discuss African art, fashion, photography, masks, history, and griot tradition in Mali and other parts of West Africa. They speak in the […]

We are pleased to announce the 2023 Rajat Neogy Editorial Fellows at A Long House! Ese Emmanuel and Dennis Mugaa have been selected as this year’s fellows. They’ll be succeeding the inaugural fellows, Clarie Gor […]

“This dearth of editorial talent on the continent often results in the mistranslation of sensibility, or subjectivity when foreign editors take on African books. We conceived this fellowship in response to that. We conceived of this fellowship in response to this.”

“In creating this fellowship, we asked ourselves what tradition we could follow to indicate the continuation of a lineage—someone whose work, though not much talked about, changed the trajectory and development of literature on the continent—and we immediately thought of the great Rajat Neogy, who founded Transition when he was just 22”

Today, two words describe most of the discourse around Africa and the black diaspora: “racism” and “colonization.” But the idea of a black self outside of external definitions requires language that exists beyond the influences […]

For the third edition of the Long Talk series, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi and Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor re-examined what it means to formulate a state.

“Moving away from the regular trope of the “founding fathers,” Owuor and Makumbi who have both written books that critically assess the origin of nations (Kenya and Uganda respectively), will be in conversation, exposing us to the anxieties, insights, and stories that birthed their projects.”

“Ladan Osman and Safia Elhillo: ‘Intimate Archives and Reimagined Histories’ for Long Talk: Conversations Across Intimate Diasporas”

“Kwame Dawes and Gregory Pardlo: ‘Intimate Archives and Reimagined Histories’ for Long Talk: Conversations Across Intimate Diasporas”