Abubakar Adam Ibrahim will kick off the new James Murua Literary LiveStream on Wednesday, November 4, 2020, at 18:00 GMT/ 19:00 WAT/ 20:00 CAT/ 21:00 EAT. You can join the stream on Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter.
In 2014, this blog set up the African Author Google Hangout to allow fans of African literature to interact with their favourite authors from all over the continent. Some of the writers who were happy to participate were Hawa Jande Golakai, Kinyanjui Kombani, Nii Ayikwei Parkes, and Abubakar Adam Ibrahim. The idea was well received at the time but with the required Internet to consistently do a decent job unavailable, it had to go on the backburner.
In 2020, the need for platforms that allow the many authors producing work around the Pan African world to interact with readers has never been more needed. There have been initiatives to bring writers to your living room especially with a global pandemic and social unrest as a result of its effects. Festivals like Afrolit Sans Frontiers, Juneteenth Literary Festival and Bakwa Literary Festivals were set up in response to the times while others like the Ake Festival and South African Book Festival went virtual.
While these festivals are important spaces for writers and readers to interact, they sadly offer only relatively short engagement times. The need for a regular opportunity for bibliophiles to interact with writers is still there especially in this pandemic wracked world. There are several opportunities for this engagement such as the excellent Cheeky Natives and Books & Rhymes who both started as podcasters and expanded to live engagement over social media platforms. Cheeky Natives have gone the route of streaming video on YouTube and Facebook while Books & Rhymes has quickly established herself as the queen of African Bookstagram. Our friends over at Brittlepaper also have been doing invaluable work engaging with authors over on their Instagram.
We here at James Murua Literary would like to add our contribution to these wonderful initiatives a new project we dub the James Murua Literary LiveStream. There will be regular engagements between bibliophiles and writers as well as those that make the writing ecosystem tick over Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Our first guest is Abubakar Adam Ibrahim who really should need no introduction if you follow African writing. The Abuja-based Nigerian has written the short story collection The Whispering Trees (2012) and a much-loved debut novel Season of Crimson Blossoms (2015) which won him the Nigerian Literature Prize, the richest in African letters. He has a new short story collection on the way called Dreams and Assorted Nightmares published by Masobe Books.
Abubakar Adam Ibrahim will be joining me to discuss his new book on Wednesday, November 4 at 18:00 GMT/ 19:00 WAT/ 20:00 CAT/ 21:00 EAT. If you want to interact with this author, you can join the stream on Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter.
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