The Lagos Review, a new literary journal founded by Dami Ajayi and Toni Kan, makes its official debut today September 1, 2019.
Dami Ajayi and Toni Kan aren’t new names in the African literary community. Dami Ajayi, who has written two critically acclaimed poetry collections in Clinical Blues and A Woman’s Body Is A Country, is one of the founders of Saraba Magazine. Toni Kan is the writer of the novel The Carnivorous City and the short story collection Nights Of The Creaking Bed.
The two Lagos-based writers have today unveiled The Lagos Review, the continent’s newest literary journal. They plan to focus on interrogating our literary and artistic output and provide a handle for the audience and those in academia to assess works of literature and art. It will provide an avenue for publishers and literary gatekeepers to obtain critical appraisals of their publications with access to a captive audience of literary and artistic patrons. They share their vision on the first edition of their publication thus;
“At The Lagos Review, we believe that a review is the first critical engagement with a work of art, books, movies, music, plays etc. It helps shape opinion, excite conversation, and push engagement. There is, today, a dearth of critical engagement with works of art. This has been exacerbated by the atrophying of art pages in our newspapers and a paucity of discerning art writers with a critical and analytical bent of mind. Another reason is the migration of critical discourse from the pages of newspapers to online platforms where analytical and critical rigour has been largely replaced by navel-gazing editorialising. The Lagos Review will reverse this trend.”
The journal, which will be published weekly, is divided into the segments of music review, book review, movie review, stage review, essay, interviews, and news. Unlike many journals in the African literary space, the team has opted to give a token payment for all submissions.
The first edition has interviews with Sefi Atta and Zukiswa Wanner, reviews of Victor AD’s Left Pocket album, a review of Chika Unigwe’s Better Never Than Late by Brian Chikwava, and much much more.
Please click here to check out the newest publication in town.
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