In our continuing series, we introduce you to literary magazines from African and Black writing. This month we present Agbowó, BKO Magazine, and DRR (Down River Road).
A literary magazine publishes short stories, poetry, essays, literary criticism, book reviews, as well as biographical profiles of authors, interviews, and letters. One reads wonderful voices, many new, in a digestible form and there are many coming out of the African and Black writing world at the moment. In June, we introduced you to Fiyah, Libretto, and Lolwe, while in July, we showed love to The ArabLit Quarterly, Doek!, and Pree.
For August, we introduce you to three more journals that have come out in the recent past from around the African and Black writing world.
- Agbowó
Recent Issue: July 2020.
Country: Nigeria.
Agbowó is an Afrocentric literary and arts community that embraces literary and visual African art, listen to new voices, and embraces innovative artistic expression. One of the flagship products of the community is Agbowó, a platform where the works of African writers and artists come alive and readers find the most intriguing work.
The most recent edition of Agbowó, dubbed the Memory issue, has poems, essays, short stories, visual art, and photography from contributors from Malawi, Cameroon, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Zambia, and Botswana. The contributor list represents emerging voices and visions that constitute a new guard in the African literary and visual art scene in the coming years.
To get the issue please click here.
- BKO Magazine
Recent Issue: August 2020.
Country: South Africa.
BKO is a tri-monthly thought-leadership literature publication, devoted to imaginative work such as short stories, poetry, experimental, flash fiction, and essays. BKO Literature Magazine is published and owned by Geko Publishing.
The most recent edition of the magazine has multi-award-winning author and intellectual Sabata-mpho Mokae, one of the important Setswana writers in South Africa, as the featured writer. There is also new work from Angie Chuma, Sisca Julius, Moemise Motsepe, Athol Williams, among others.
To get a copy of the magazine, please click here.
- DRR (Down River Road)
Recent issue: August 2020
Country: Kenya.
drr is an online and print journal that publishes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and ideas. The theme for their most recent edition, the second, is “Ritual” looking at the ways in which “we be, the ways in which we are, the ways in which we play and work and rest and create, the ways in which we gather, the ways in which we seek and do solitude.”
Some of the contributors are Caroline Okello, Ojo Taiye, Greenman Mbilo, Rofhiwa Maneta, Dalle Abraham, Pèlúmi Sàlàkó, Lutivini Majanja, Michael Onsando, Ray Mwihaki, Ivy Nyayieka, Olekitan Aledesuyi, Ophelia Akanjo, and many others.
To buy a copy of the magazine please click here.
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