Library Of Africa and The African Diaspora

We are delighted to announce the recipients of our third and final LOATAD Black Atlantic Residency, supported by Hawthornden Foundation.

Nine exceptional writers and thinkers from Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago, the USA, and the UK will be in residence at LOATAD in Accra, Ghana, in 2026 to work individually and in community to produce work on the theme, “What is Africa to the world?”

Covering the range of literary genres, from fiction and poetry to narrative nonfiction and academic writing, the writers were chosen from over 300 applicants from across Africa and the Diaspora through a highly competitive open call.

The nine writers are:

Nana Sandy Achampong’s life’s work has been dedicated to words, wisdom, and the power of communication. Born in Cape Coast, Ghana, he is a recognised figure in media and education. His career spans journalism, public relations, advertising, marketing, events, the visual arts, and literature. His creative output is substantial, with over 30 works to his credit, covering a wide array of genres, including poetry, plays, children’s literature, non-fiction, fiction, media studies, and anthologies. He currently brings his knowledge and experience to the African University of Communications and Business, where he’s not only an educator but is also Director of the Ama Ata Aidoo Centre for Creative Writing and Head of the Department of Creative Arts. His most recent books are A Taste of the Serpent’s Kiss, One Stone, One Bride and a Zombie, The Mystery of the Treasure Keeper, and Nkyinkyim.

Kimberly F. Monroe, PhD, is a writer, cultural curator, associate professor and director of Africana Studies based in Washington, DC. A native of South Louisiana, her scholarship and creative work centre on Black radical traditions, memory, and global liberation movements. Deeply engaged in both academic and public intellectual spaces, Dr Monroe’s writing bridges history, culture, and political activism to illuminate the Black Freedom Struggle across the African diaspora. Her recent work has been featured in Picturing Black History, The Funambulist, and Spirit House: A Crossroads Project with Princeton University. Through her teaching, curation, and writing, she creates environments that celebrate the depth and diversity of Black life and thought across histories and landscapes. Dr Monroe is currently completing her forthcoming book, The Black Underground: Assata Shakur and Global Freedom Struggles (Princeton University Press), which examines transnational networks of resistance and the legacies of revolutionary Black women.

Dr Nick Makoha is a Ugandan poet and playwright based in London and the founder of Obsidian Foundation. His new collection is The New Carthaginians (Penguin 2025). He is the winner of the 2021 Ivan Juritz Prize and the Poetry London Prize. In 2017, Nick’s debut collection, Kingdom of Gravity, was shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection and was one of the Guardian’s best books of the year. His poems have appeared in Poetry, the Cambridge Review, the New York Times, Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, Rialto, Poetry London, TriQuarterly Review, 5 Dials, Boston Review, Callaloo, Birmingham Lit Journal and Wasafiri. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (RSL).

Dr Khadija Koroma is the Founder and Chief Executive of Leh We Talk, a Sierra Leone–based mental health NGO using storytelling and community-centred practice to destigmatise mental illness and expand access to culturally relevant support. She holds a PhD in African Women’s Representation. Khadija’s work bridges scholarship and practice: she designed the Mind Check survey, authored the Wan De Project (storytelling workshops delivered in Krio), produced organisational policies and project plans, and secured seed funding to pilot community programmes—reaching hundreds of participants. Earlier career roles include work in local government, where she co-founded the NGDP BAME Network and helped raise BAME graduate representation from under 6% to over 25%, as well as consultancy advising boards on EDI and governance. She was also the co-director of New Voices in Postcolonial Studies, convenes symposia for early-career scholars, and has taught and lectured at the university level. Khadija brings a feminist, participatory approach to research and programme design, and is committed to translating archival insight and literary practice into practical tools for communal healing and policy change.

Amandla Thomas-Johnson is a British-born writer and journalist of African-Caribbean descent who has reported from a dozen countries, across Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe and Africa. He was based in Dakar, Senegal, for three years, covering Francophone West Africa for Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye and the Daily Telegraph. Trained at Channel 4, he has contributed to The Guardian,  BBC Radio 4, Jacobin and Vice, among others. He is the author of Becoming Kwame Ture (Chimurenga 2020), about the activist formerly known as Stokely Carmichael’s years living in Guinea. He is currently pursuing a PhD in the Department of Literatures in English at Cornell University, focusing on the global solidarities that coalesced around the Grenadian Revolution.

Avah Atherton is a Trinidadian writer and cultural heritage researcher whose work explores memory, imagination, and worldmaking across the Black Atlantic. She examines the artistic resonance of Black and people of colour in the Caribbean through oral histories, creative nonfiction, and digital media that honour ancestral African storytelling practices and trace their ongoing evolution. She has documented the voices of Trinidad and Tobago’s 1970 Black Power Revolution through an oral history project supported by the Caribbean Digital Scholarship Collective, and she is the founder of Trinbago Griot, a digital storytelling platform dedicated to preserving and reimagining Trinidad and Tobago’s cultural memory. Her essays for the Smithsonian Institution highlight the intersections of culture, ecology, and identity in island life, revealing how Trinidad Carnival practices and rituals testify to the resilience and innovation of African tradition-bearers. Avah’s broader practice bridges research, storytelling, and digital preservation to strengthen connections between art, history, and community, affirming the Caribbean as an active site of African diasporic knowledge and imagination.

Abubakar Ibrahim, known as the “Imam of Poets,” is a Nigerian poet, visual artist, and vector biologist from New Bussa in Niger State, North Central Nigeria. His work explores themes of grief, identity, memory and displacement. His poetry often engages with communal histories and imagination, and reflects on how individuals perceive themselves and how others perceive them. His interdisciplinary foundation in the sciences lends his poetry an analytical sensitivity. His background as an environmental and biological researcher infuses his writing with keen observation and a sense of ecological and human interdependence. He is the winner of the 2025 Jacar Press Chapbook Contest, and his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Chapter House Journal, Con-Scio Magazine, One Journal, Arts Lounge, Art Muse Fair, Konya Shamsrumi, The Weganda Review, and elsewhere. His poem, “The Only Elegy”, was shortlisted for the 2025 Akachi Chukwuemeka Prize for Literature. He co-authored “In the Realm of Dreams” with Jide Badmus in 2023, a cross-genre of poems and visual arts.

Karen Chalamilla is a culture writer and researcher based in Dar es Salaam, with a keen interest in African art and (pop) culture. Her work explores art in all its forms, in relation to political and identity considerations, including race, gender, sexuality, and class. Her work has been featured on The Republic, Africa Is A Country, African Arguments, Tangaza Magazine, The Citizen Newspaper, TewasArt and Gal-dem. Karen is part of the ongoing Tender Visions program at Tender Photos. She is also a 2025-2026 Emergic Critic at the National Book Critics Circle.

Christopher Armoh is a Ghanaian poet and cultural storyteller whose work explores identity, memory, and the everyday moments that carry history within them. He earned his B.A. in English from KNUST in 2022 and won the 2025 Adinkra Poetry Prize. His poems and stories have appeared in Brittle Paper and other places. His poem “Focus on Africa,” first published in Of Voices and Movements, an anthology from the Department of English at KNUST, is now taught in the university’s undergraduate programme. He is a recipient of the inaugural Duapa Mentorship Programme, The NadèLi and New Voices Mentorship Programme and the 2025 Ubwali Masterclass, and he was shortlisted for the New Voices Poetry Contest. Outside the page, he hosts the Take Um So Podcast, where young people speak honestly about struggle, resilience, and their hopes for society. He also founded BOYS & BOOKS, a literacy initiative that encourages and nurtures boys and young men to read African literature closely and with heart.

The judges for this year’s application round were writer and translator Edwige-Renée Dro from Côte d’Ivoire, writer, historian, and legal expert Joseph Ben Kaifala from Sierra Leone, and poet and scholar Dr Aza Weir-Soley from Jamaica.

Main image: Nathaniel Tetteh, Unsplash