Current Projects

NEW DAUGHTERS OF AFRICA – THE PODCAST

Our latest project is a homage to the ground-breaking anthologies

Daughters of Africa and New Daughters of Africa

edited by Margaret Busby, containing essays, short prose, poetry and memoires each containing more than 200 female authors from Africa and its global diaspora. The podcast series will focus on Black female authors and their work, perspectives and sources of inspiration. The focus is on political and social topics such as gender roles, feminism and empowerment and how they are renegotiated within literature.

The podcast is available on all major podcast platforms. Listen here.

The series is curated and hosted by Panashe Chigumadzi, a journalist, columnist and author born in Zimbabwe who grew up in South Africa.

Her debut novel Sweet Medicine and her Essay Theses Bones Will Rise Again

were critically acclaimed. She is the founding editor of VANGUARD magazine, a platform for young Black women in South Africa and was the curator of the first Soweto Abantu Book Festival in 2015. Currently, Panashe is a doctoral student at Harvard University.

As an homage to the ground-breaking (New) Daughters of Africa anthologies compiling writing by women of African descent across centuries and continents edited by Margaret Busby, host Panashe Chigumadzi, one of the ‘New Daughters’ and author of Sweet Medicine and These Bones Will Rise Again will be in conversation with fellow Black women writers across continents, genres, and generations.

In the first episode Panashe kicks off with editor Margaret Busby herself. Followed by intriguing conversations with Carolyn Cooper, Professor Emerita of Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica, Angolan-Portuguese novelist and essayist Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida, Ayesha Harruna Attah, author of novels for adults as well es young adults from Ghana, and Doreen Baingana, author of short stories and novels and literary activist from Uganda.

PANDE.ME

Pande.Me is a digital workshop for young people passionate about writing and drawing. Participants from Germany and West African countries will work in tandems on short comics and illustrations representing the impact of the pandemic has had on their lives.

They will learn the basics of storytelling, character development, concept design and visual realization. Their works will be presented in Berlin at the end of the year and in form of a digital publication.

The project is curated and led by Edwige Renée-Dro and Adrian Wilkins. Edwige Renée-Dro is a writer, translator and literary activist from Ivory Coast. Her work was published in various magazines as well as in the anthology New Daughters of Africa by Margaret Busby. She co-founded the literary collective Abidjan Lit and recently opened a public library in Abidjan, which focuses on the work of female authors from Africa and the Black diaspora.

Adrian Wilkins is an illustrator and concept artist in the film and video game industry, focusing on character and costume design. He has worked on projects for Marvel Entertainment, Warner Brothers, Riot Games, Harper Collins Publishing and many others. He also teaches character design at the School 4 Games vocational school.