Sihle Nthuli and Yvonne Wabai were revealed to be Rajat Neogy Fellows 2025 on Tuesday, March 4, 2025.
A Long House is a publication for black thought, stories, and critical discourse founded by Kechi Nomu, Gbenga Adesina, and Yinka Elujoba in 2020. In 2021, they announced a fellowship named for Rajat Neogy, the famed Ugandan founder of Transition, one of the most influential literary magazines from Africa. The fellows were supposed to work with the founding editors on editing contributors’ entries. They would also manage communication with contributors, oversee publication schedule, curate a newsletter, reach out to/suggest new contributors, and work with founding editors on themed issues. Previous fellows have been Clarie Gor and Kelechi Njoku (2021) and Ese Emmanuel and Dennis Mugaa (2023).
The Rajat Neogy Fellows for 2025 Sihle Nthuli and Yvonne Wabai were announced on Tuesday, March 4.
The journal said, “we’re immensely proud that they are this year’s fellows, as they have demonstrated real interest in the literatures of Africa and the Black world and are committed to contributing their best to fostering an ecosystem that inspires, nurtures, and preserves these literatures. Through their work with A Long House—which involves editing, writing, literary curation, and collaboration with other writers, editors, and artists—they will expand the notions and aesthetics of what writing as an African and a black person is and can be.”
Here are their profiles;
Yvonne Wabai
Yvonne Wabai is a Kenyan writer/editor and thinker. Her work explores themes of identity, resistance, and community. Drawing inspiration from personal experiences and cultural narratives, she seeks to challenge oppressive structures by creating and nurturing spaces where marginalized and underrepresented voices can flourish. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Feminist Magazine, Haunted Words Press, Unstamatic Magazine, The Kalahari Review, and more. She is the Managing Editor at Isele Magazine.
Sihle Ntuli
Sihle Ntuli is a poet, classicist and editor from Durban, South Africa. He received his Master of Arts in Classical Civilizations from Rhodes University, where he briefly lectured Classics at the University of the Free State and the University of Johannesburg. His writing has been supported by the Johannesburg Institute of Advanced Studies in South Africa and the Centre for Stories in Australia through the JIAS Fellowship & Patricia Kailis Fellowship respectively. He also served as the editor-in-chief of South Africa’s oldest literary magazine New Contrast in 2023. He is the 2024/2025 Diann Blakely National Poetry Competition Winner, a 2024 Best of the Net poetry winner and a Pushcart prize nominee. His poems have appeared in ADDA stories, Poetry Wales, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry London, and elsewhere. He is the author of two poetry chapbooks; Rumblin (uHlanga 2020) and The Nation (River Glass Books 2023) alongside two full length collections Stranger (Aerial Publishing 2015) and Zabalaza Republic (Botsotso Publishing 2023).
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