Library Of Africa and The African Diaspora

The Library Of Africa and The African Diaspora (LOATAD) is pleased to announce the five writers from across Africa selected to be in residence with us at LOATAD in Accra, Ghana, this month for the AU20 “Our Africa, Our Future” writing residency in partnership with the African Union, the UNDP, and Africa No Filter:

Meet poet Nour Kamel from Egypt. Nour writes about identity, language, sexuality, queerness, gender, oppression, femininity, trauma, family, lineage, globalisation, loss and food. She is the author of the chapbook “Noon,” in New-Generation African Poets: A Chapbook Box Set (Sita).

Meet fiction writer TJ Benson from Nigeria. His writing explores the body in the context of memory, migration, utopia and the unconscious self and his works have been exhibited, published in several journals, and shortlisted for awards. The author of three novels, his latest, People Live Here, is out now.

Meet fiction writer Musih Tedji Xaviere from Cameroon. She is a writer, activist, and Moth Storyteller. Her debut novel, These Letters End in Tears, won the 2021 Pontas and JJ Bola Emerging Writer’s Prize. It will be published in the US and UK in 2024 by Catapult and Jacaranda Books.

Meet writer Tony Mochama from Kenya. He is a poet, author and senior journalist at The Nation Media Group. He is a three-time winner of the Burt Awards for African Young Adult Literature and is a recipient of the Miles Morland Writing Scholarship. His futuristic novel, 2063 – Last Mile Bet, was published by Oxford University Press.

Meet fiction writer Sue Nyathi from South Africa. She is the author of four novels, her latest, An Angel’s Demise, published in October by Pan Macmillan. A Zimbabwean based in South Africa, she was longlisted for the 2020 Dublin Literary Award and is a JIAS Fellow ’22.

We received an overwhelming number of applications from across the continent, and the selected writers represent the best of African literary talent as well as the literary future.

We look forward to welcoming them to Accra and working with them to develop work to commemorate the AU’s 20th anniversary on the theme, “Our Africa, Our Future.”

Follow their residency journeys at loatad_org on Instagram and Facebook.