Representing Africa with the New Daughters
Channel: British Library
Date: 2020-10-30

To mark the paperback release of the pivotal anthology New Daughters of Africa, contributors Anni Domingo, Ade Solanke, Goretti Kyomuhendo and Zukiswa Wanner join Lavinya Stennett to discuss their perspectives on African representation in education, art and literature. We will also hear readings from the anthology itself.

New Daughters of Africa celebrates the work of 200 women writers of African descent and charts a literary landscape as never before. From Antigua to Zimbabwe and Angola to the USA, overlooked artists of the past join key figures, popular contemporaries and emerging writers in paying tribute to the heritage that unites them, the strong links that endure from generation to generation, and their common obstacles around issues of race, gender and class.

Anni Domingo is an actress, director and writer, working in radio, TV, film and theatre. She appeared earlier this year in Inua Ellam’s Three Sisters at the National Theatre. Currently Anni is a lecturer at St. Mary’s University in Twickenham and Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama. Her poems and short stories are published in various anthologies. She has just finished her first novel, Breaking the Maafa Chain, due to be published in 2021.

Goretti Kyomuhendo is one of Uganda’s leading novelists. Her first novel, The First Daughter, was published in 1996, followed by Secrets No More in 1999, which won the Uganda National Literary Award for Best Novel in the same year. In 2002, she published a novella, Whispers from Vera. Her third novel, Waiting, was published by The Feminist Press in New York in 2007. In 2014, she published the Essential Handbook for African Creative Writers. She has also published several short stories and children’s books. 

Ade Solanke is an award-winning British-Nigerian playwright, screenwriter and academic. She has an MFA in Film from the University of Southern California where she was a Fulbright Scholar. Her award-winning plays include the acclaimed Pandora's Box, which won a Best New Play nomination in the Off West End Theatre Awards and was shortlisted for the $100,000 Nigeria Prize for Literature, Africa’s biggest literary award. Ade’s most recent play is The Court Must Have a Queen which premiered at Hampton Court Palace in 2018. She’s written for The Guardian, The New Statesman, Art Monthly, The Times Literary Supplement, The Voice and BBC Radio 4.

Lavinya Stennett, our chair for this event, is a historian, writer and recent graduate from SOAS.  She founded the social enterprise The Black Curriculum to address the lack of Black British history in the UK curriculum. The organisation works to provide a sense of belonging and identity to young people across the UK, teaching an accessible educational Black British history curriculum. They deliver arts focused Black history programmes, provide teacher training and campaign tirelessly to represent and support young people in the UK.

Zukiswa Wanner is a South African writer, editor, and publisher born in Zambia, raised in Zimbabwe and currently based in Kenya. Her debut novel, The Madams (2006), was shortlisted for the 2007 K.Sello Duiker Award. Her third novel Men of the South (2010) was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book. In 2015, she won the K Sello Duiker Memorial Literary Award for London Cape Town Joburg (2014). Zukiswa has also written three children’s books and is also a curator of literary events. She was awarded the Goethe Medal, alongside Ian McEwan and Elvira Espejo Ayca, making Zukiswa the first African woman to win the award.
Image of Zukiswa Wanner by Troy Onyango

In association with Myriad Editions and The Black Curriculum