Here's an update to our series "Bookclubs in Ghana"

In this episode, I speak with the founders of Two Bookclubs about creating a reading club.

About the Bookclub:

Two Bookclub is a bookclub created by bookstagrammers @Bene Reads and @Ka_karang to help readers connect with other readers and find a community.

Discover what made Abena Maryan take a break and catch up on her latest life updates!

Email: bookswithabena@gmail.com

This episode highlights Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi's life, writing, and achievements.

Books:

1. Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi read by Abena Maryan
2. Manchester Happened by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi read by Amba, Naa Atswei & Prince Henry
3. The First Woman by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi read by Abena Maryan

Related Articles: 

• https://jennifermakumbi.net/
• 
  
• https://www.deutschland.de/en/topic/culture/we-interview-the-writer-jennifer-makumbi
• 
  
• https://granta.com/contributor/jennifer-nansubuga-makumbi/

In this episode, I talk to Kataru Yahya about her debut novel Home is a Silhouette. We discuss the writing and publishing of the book, themes and characters, and representation of Muslim women. 

About the Book: 

 Asiya Abdullah has it all. But still, her heart is restless. She yearns for a closer relationship with her mother and friends who truly care about her. When a single mistake forces her into the grasp of a successful, powerful, and wanted man, Asiya’s life is thrust into a dark and violent world hidden behind the glittering walls of a mansion.

Lila has long since given up the idea of escaping. Five years have been stolen from her, and with little to go back to, she obediently serves as a maid to the Master of the house. Lila knows she’s a shell of herself and surrounded by people she cannot trust, but with nowhere as a home for her heart, what else can she do? When the two girls’ paths converge, their worlds shatter.

HOME IS A SILHOUETTE is a stunning debut by Kataru Yahya, spinning a multi-POV loose retelling of Beauty and the Beast set in Ghana, where not all fairy tales are magical.

About the Author:

Kataru Yahya is a Ghanaian writer, poet and diagnostic medical sonographer. Her interest in writing started when she was fourteen. Kataru’s poetry has been published in Ta Adesa and Writer’s Space Africa-Ghana. Outside of writing and ultrasound, she loves to read or binge reruns of her favorite shows.

HOME IS A SILHOUETTE is her debut novel.

Happy New Year! Welcome to 2024! 

Racheal and I discussed our reading goals from last year (2023) and this year's reading goals, the bookish ins and outs, and anticipated reads.

This episode features Bookstagrammers discussing their reading year.

Several book clubs exist in and around Accra to foster a love of reading and create a reader community. In this episode, I talk to Amba, a co-founder of Bibliophiles and Vibes and some Book Club members.

Bibliophiles and Vibes is a book club created by four Ghanaian girls who share a love for books.

In this episode, Racheal Kizza and I discuss "How Book Influencers are Shaping the Literary Space."

The rise of book influencers on social media platforms such as Instagram, YouTube and TikTok has changed how readers connect and engage with literature. Recently, Book Influencers' increasing popularity and importance are clear as readers turn to Book Influencers for book recommendations, trusting their opinions on books.

In this episode, my guests and I talk about starting a book account on social media.

Guests:

@bene.reads

@ka_karang

@booksxbrews

Racheal Kizza will join me to discuss Ugandan books. The list is curated to help you add Ugandan authors and books to your reading list. 

About my Guest:

Racheal Kizza is a cultural practitioner with the Ugandan German Cultural Society, Ibua Publishing and Lolwe. She is the founder and host of Meet Your Author, a podcast that spotlights and celebrates African authors through collaborative discussions and interviews.

Podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/meet-your-author

Books and Authors Mentioned:

+ A Recipe for Disaster by Lillian Tindyebwa

+ The First Woman by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

+ Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

+ Whispers from Vera by Goretti Kyomuhendo

+ Widows Wear Lipstick by Martha Kyoshaba Twinamatsiko

+ A Killing in the Sun by Dilman Dila

+ The World Is Ours by Lucie Chihandae

+ Remembering the Future: Reflections on Ugandan Culture in Changing Times by Ibua Publishing (Non-fiction)

+ The Rainmakers by Paul Kisakye

+ Adavera and Kunda by Rachael A.Z. Mutabingwa 

Books Influencers to follow:

IG: @abookician_here & @kabby_wanderingbookie

X @i_zziwa

Online Magazine:

The Weganda Review

In this episode, my guests and I talk about Caleb Azumah Nelson's book Small Worlds.

Guests: @bene.reads, @ka_karang and @booksxbrews

Summary of the book: 

Set over the course of three summers, Small Worlds follows Stephen, a first-generation Londoner born to Ghanaian immigrant parents, brother to Ray, and best friend to Adeline. On the cusp of big life changes, Stephen feels pressured to follow a certain path—a university degree, a move out of home—but when he decides instead to follow his first love, music, his world and family fracture in ways he didn’t foresee. Now Stephen must find a path and peace for himself: a space he can feel beautiful, a space he can feel free. Moving from London, England to Accra, Ghana and back again, Small Worlds is an exquisite and intimate new novel about the people and places we hold close. 

About the author: 

Caleb Azumah Nelson is a British-Ghanaian writer and photographer living in South East London. His first novel, Open Water won the Costa First Novel Award and Debut of the Year at the British Book Awards and was number one Times bestseller. It was also shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year.

We are celebrating the memory of Ama Ata Aidoo, Ghana's first prominent female author, with news articles written by some Ghanaian writers.

Articles read were written by:

Annis Haffar published in the Daily Graphic 

Nii Ayikwei Parkes online by The Republic 

https://republic.com.ng/august-september-2023/the-indelible-life-of-ama-ata-aidoo/

Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah published online by The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/jul/05/our-feminist-ancestor-ama-ata-aidoo-author-activist-and-african-heroine

Voices heard or Music:

Ama Ata Aidoo on Feminism in Africa -BBC HARDtalk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_gJwy9yjrk&t=21s

 Brown bids farewell to Playwright Ama Ata Aidoo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW5V1GH7F6E

Poetra Asantewa sings a song from Anowa, written by Ama Ata Aidoo

Monsters You Made by Burna Boy 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW5V1GH7F6E

In this episode, my guests and I discuss DNFing books. DNF simply stands for did not finish. In this episode, we discuss why we DNF books and how we rate them after we do so.

Here's a look at some books with my favourite opening lines.

Books Mentioned:

• Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangaremba
• The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives by Lola Shoneyin
• Kintu by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
• The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi
• Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• His Only Wife by Peace Adzo Medie
• Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
• Breast and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami
• Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa
• Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
• Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson
• Vagabonds by Eloghosa by Osunde
• You Made A Fool of Death With Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi

My guest Tryphena Yeboah talks about writing with vulnerability and heart.

Books mentioned:

Poetry Collection: A Mouthful of Home, selected by the New Generation African Poets Series

Short Story: Lemon Dove https://www.birdfeastmagazine.com/sixteen/yeboah/

Bio/Profile:

Tryphena Yeboah is a Ghanaian writer and the author of the poetry chapbook, A Mouthful of Home, selected by the New Generation African Poets Series. Her fiction and essays have appeared in Narrative Magazine, Commonwealth Writers, and Lit Hub, among others. She is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, studying English with an emphasis in Creative Writing.

In this episode, Bene and Afrah discuss their reading journey thus far in 2023.

Categories:

• Favourite book/books of the year so far
• Best New Release of the Year so far
• Biggest Disappointment of the Year so far
• Favourite Author or Authors of the Year so far
• Favourite Fictional Character of the Year so far
• A book that made you cry and a book that made you laugh
• Favourite Audiobook
• Anticipated releases for the second half of the year

In today’s episode, we will discuss Self Publishing with my guest Ami Tamakloe author of Charcoal. We talk about why they chose to self-publish, the cost of self-publishing, and the publishing industry. 

About the author:

Ami Tamakloe is human unravelling and reconstructing. Originally from Ghana, they are currently a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology at Cornell University. Through artistry, activism and intellect, Ami resists by creating work that foregrounds accessibility around themes of Blackness, gender, sexuality and culture. Artistically, Ami is a unicorn who creates through writing, oration, performance, filmmaking and textiles. When working, Ami focuses on the story and the story reciprocates by shaping itself. They recently co-curated a textile exhibition titled Material Resistance, independently produced three short films and self-published their debut book titled 'Charcoal: Book of Thoughts and Short Stories'. Ami is currently a Graduate Fellow with the Ufahamu Africa Podcast, has been featured on Adventures Reads for the popular blog Adventures from the Bedroom of African Women and they are currently a Fellow with the Adventures Creator Program. 

I speak with Martin Egblewogbe about the types of readers in Ghana, the reading culture in Ghana, publishing, the Writers Project of Ghana, and writing the novel "The Waiting."

About my guest: Martin is a senior lecturer at the Department of Physics, University of Ghana. He is the author of the collection of short stories, The Waiting published by Lubin & Kleyner in 2020 and Mr Happy and The Hammer of God and Other Stories published by Ayebia in 2012. Professor Martin was the commissioning editor for the anthology Resilience published in 2021 and also co-edited the anthology of short stories, The Sea Has Drowned the Fish in 2018 as well as the anthologies of poetry Look where you have gone to Sit published in 2010 and According to Sources published in 2015. He is a co-founder and a director of the Writers Project of Ghana, and was the director of Pa Gya! A Literary Festival in Accra. He also hosts the radio show, Writers Project on Citi FM.

In this interview, I speak to Uwem Akpan, author of the books New York My Village and Say You Are One Of Them, about the importance of war stories in our world today.

About New York, My Village by Uwem Akpan

Ekong Udousoro is the winner of the Toni Morrison Publishing Fellowship, he travels to New York to learn the in and outs of the publishing industry and curate a short story collection about the Biafran War. In New York, Ekong encounters callous agents, greedy landlords and hostile neighbours.

About the Author:

Uwem Akpan was born in Ikot Akpan Eda in Akwa Ibom State in Nigeria. Uwem's short stories and autobiographical pieces have appeared in the special editions of The New Yorker, the Oprah magazine,Hekima Review, the Nigerian Guardian, America, etc.

His first book, Say You're One of Them, was published in 2008 by Little, Brown, after a protracted auction. It made the "Best of the Year" list at People magazine, Wall Street Journal, and other places. The New York Times made it the Editor's Choice, and Entertainment Weekly listed it at # 27 in their Best of the Decade. Say You're One of Them won the Commonwealth Prize (Africa Region), the Open Book Prize, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. The collection of short stories was the 2009 Oprah Book Club selection. A New York Times and Wall Street Journal #1 bestseller, it has been translated into 12 languages.

His second book and first novel, New York, My Village, was published on November 2, 2021, by WW Norton. In this immigrant story, Uwem writes about NYC with the same promise and pain we saw in his African cities of Say You're One of Them. "New York City has always mystified me since I first spent two weeks in the Bronx in 1993," he says. "It was only when I lived in Manhattan in 2013 that I began to understand the metro system, to visit the different neighbourhoods, to enjoy the endless ethnic dishes. It didn't also take long before I discovered the city's crazy underbelly."

Uwem has been a Fellow at the Black Mountain Institute (University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2010), Institute for the Humanities (University of Michigan, 2011), Yaddo Foundation (Saratoga Springs, New York, 2012), the Cullman Center (the New York Public Library, 2013) and the Hang Center for Catholic Intellectual Heritage (Loyola University Chicago, 2017).

Uwem teaches in the University of Florida's MFA Program.

This is an unhinged episode with the other team members. Abena takes the Hot Seat in a Q&A section. 

Thank you for listening to our Book Conversations.

Enjoy