CATALYST PRESS
DISRUPTION: New Short Fiction from Africa
ISBN 9781946395573 | trade paper | $16.95 | publication date Sept 2021
dis• rup • tion /dɪsˈrʌp.ʃən/ [noun] Disturbance or problems which interrupt an event, activity, or process.
This genre-spanning anthology explores the many ways that we grow, adapt, and survive in the face of our ever-changing global realities. In these evocative, often prescient, stories, new and emerging writers from across Africa investigate many of the pressing issues of our time: climate change, pandemics, social upheaval, surveillance, and more.
From a post-apocalyptic African village in Innocent Ilo’s “Before We Die Unwritten,” to space colonization in Alithnayn Abdulkareem’s “Static,” to a mother’s attempt to save her infant from a dust storm in Mbozi Haimbe’s “Shelter,” Disruption illuminates change around and within, and our infallible capacity for hope amidst disaster. Facing our shared anxieties head on, these authors scrutinize assumptions and invent worlds that combine the fantastical with the probable, the colonial with the dystopian, and the intrepid with the powerless, in stories recognizing our collective future and our disparate present.
Disruption is the newest anthology from Short Story Day Africa, a non-profit organization established to develop and share the diversity of Africa’s voices through publishing and writing workshops.
Edited by Jason Mykl Snyman, Karina M. Szczurek, and Rachel Zadok
REVIEWS
”50 Notable African Books of 2021“ —Brittle Paper
“60 Best Books of 2021“ —Open Country Magazine
“The stories sprinkled throughout this collection demonstrate how people adapt to disruption in their lives, even when change seems dire. It’s a perfect anthology for readers who like a little of the fantastical in their literature, but recognize how fiction often hits very close to home.” —Sisters
“An electric collection of stories that seethes with horror and beauty.” —Lauren Beukes, author of The Shining Girls and Afterland
“The stories here are telling us disruption is and can be a catalyst for change. And that there is beauty in the many disruptions we face. This anthology runs ahead of us and we need, now more than ever, to catch up with the writers.” —Mukoma Wa Ngugi – Author and Associate Professor of Literatures in English, Cornell University
A “brilliant and diverse collection of stories”...[Disruption] carries so much soul. Many of the stories are so visceral they played like a movie, a testament to the writers’ adroit understanding of how worldbuilding works.” —Isele Magazine
“Every year I look forward to the release Short Story Day Africa’s newest anthology, which brings together the newest writing from some of the most exhilarating and talented writers on the continent. The themed collections are exquisite, expansive, and this year, eerily prescient, featuring stories on climate change, pandemics, social change, surveillance, and space travel.” —Kelsey McFaul, Center for the Art of Translation
“A must-read. This book features a number of brilliant speculative pieces by African authors. […] Learn their names, spread the word.” —Lightspeed Magazine
MacSmart Ojiludu (Nigeria) is a writer and freelance content creator living in Nigeria. He has a Bachelors in Technology from the Federal University of Technology Owerri. His fiction deals with themes of surrealism and oddity.
Kanyinsola Olorunnisola (Nigeria) is a poet, essayist and writer of fiction. His work interrogates anxiety, broken lineage, [in]sanity, grief and the black body as a warfront — you know, typical stuff happy people write about. His debut collection of nightmares, In My Country, We’re All Crossdressers was published as a chapbook by Praxis. He is the founder of the SPRINNG Literary Movement. He has an unhealthy obsession with James Baldwin and Jack Keroauc. He is very, very famous on Twitter, where he spends his pastime tweeting about the socialist revolution and all that jazz to his 32 miserable followers. @K_tops
Najwa Bin Shatwan (Libya) is a Libyan academic and novelist, the first Libyan to ever be shortlisted for the International Prize of Arabic Fiction (in 2017). She has authored four novels: Waber Al Ahssina (The Horses’ Hair); Madmum Burtuqali (Orange Content); Zareeb Al-Abeed (The Slave Yards); and Roma Termini, in addition to several collections of short stories, plays and contributions to anthologies. She was chosen as one of the thirty-nine best Arab authors under the age of forty by Hay Festival’s Beirut 39 project (2009). In 2018, she was chosen from hundreds of Arab writers for the 2018 Banipal Writing Fellowship Residency at the University of Durham and in 2020, she was chosen to co-lead a series of creative writing workshops in Sharjah (World Capital of the year book 2019) for Arab writers. Also, she was chosen as a member of jury in various literary awards/grants. Story translated into English by Sawad Hussain. Sawad is an award-winning Arabic-English literary translator. She co-teaches a workshop on translating Arabic comics at UK secondary schools via the collective Shadow Heroes. Her most recent translation is the Palestinian resistance novella Passage to the Plaza by Sahar Khalifeh (shortlisted for the 2020 Palestine Book Awards). She holds an MA in Arabic literature from the School of Oriental and African Studies, and is passionate about bringing narratives written in Arabic from the African continent to wider audiences. Upcoming releases can be found here: https://sawadhussain.com/
Nadia Ahidjo (Cameroon) is a Pan-African feminist writer and development professional based in Dakar, Senegal. She uses her experience in the development sector to weave together fiction and non-fiction stories. Her other work has been published by Afreada and African Feminisms, and is available online.
Innocent Ilo (Nigeria) is Igbo. Their works interrogate gender, class, politics and sexuality. They were awarded the 2020 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for Africa Region. A finalist for the Gerald Kraak Award and Short Story Day Africa Prize, their work has been published in Fireside Magazine, Overland, adda, Strange Horizons, Granta and has won the Africa YMCA and Oxford Festival of the Arts short story contests.
Melusi Nkomo (Zimbabwe) was born and bred in Zimbabwe. He lives and studies in Switzerland. He has been published in Wasafiri Magazine and New Frame and shortlisted for the 2018 Wasafiri Prize for New Writing. He holds a doctoral degree in Anthropology and Sociology from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies.
Victor Forna (Sierra Leone) is a writer of speculative fiction based in his country’s capital Freetown. He tweets @vforna12.
Nicholas Dawn (South Africa) is a South African/American novelist, essayist, poet and blogger, writing at the collision course of literary speculative fiction, Capitalocene ecosophies and radical politics. He tutors humanities and languages to high schoolers. His work has been published in New Contrast.
Genna Gardini (South Africa) is a South African writer, theatre-maker, and educator. She is a PhD candidate at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and recently won the 2020 CASA award to finish her latest play, Many Scars. Genna’s poetry collection, Matric Rage, received a commendation for the Ingrid Jonker Prize and she was a 2016 National Fellow at the Institute for Creative Arts.
Philisiwe Twijnstra (South Africa) is a writer, director and actor. She lives in Durban where she founded Durban Women Playwrights in 2017. She was shortlisted for the 2017 Short Sharp Stories prize. Her plays have been performed at or won awards from the National Arts Festival, the Women’s Theatre Festival in Johannesburg, Zee Zee Theatre in Canada, among others. She was recipient for the 2018 CASA playwright award residency and a 2020 Distell Playwright Finalist. She has a Masters in Creative Writing from Rhodes University.
Doreen Anyango (Uganda) is a Ugandan fiction writer, scriptwriter and biotechnologist. Her short fiction has appeared in several online journals and in print anthologies with FEMRITE (The Uganda Women Writers’ Association) and Writivism. She was longlisted for the 2016 Writivism Short Story Prize. She is an alumnus of the inaugural Mawazo Novel Writing Workshop and is hard at work on her first novel.
AUTHORS
Masiyaleti Mbewe (Zambia) is a queer Zambian afrofuturist writer, photographer, activist, academic, TEDx alumnus and Masters in Arts student based in Windhoek, Namibia. Her work revolves around the use of various mediums to navigate and negotiate alternative African futures using the confluence of language and cultural exchange in the representation of Africans in popular culture. Her fiction writing also aims to examine African technologies and the digitization of African futures.
Julia Louw (South Africa) is a South African screenwriter, primarily working in animation. She has won a Muse Award for animation screenwriting, and her work has appeared on Nickelodeon Digital, Disney XD, Cartoon Network Africa and other channels. Her poetry and essays have appeared in New Contrast, Stanzas, Literary Mama, Animal Literary Journal and elsewhere. Her short story Paper House was published in the anthology Touch: Stories of Contact (2009). She lives in Cape Town with her husband, two children, two Siberian Forest Cats and a Husky. Their family motto is “Semper capillis tecti” (always covered in hair).
Liam Brickhill (Zimbabwe) is a freelance journalist from Zimbabwe. is a multidisciplinary creative. He has worked in Southern Africa, England and India as a freelance cricket journalist, writes short fiction, and has produced and edited several music videos and an award-winning short film. Liam is a 2020 Africa Is a Country fellow and is working on his debut novel.
Jacob M’hango (Zambia) is a writer of literary fiction with themes that seek to explore the human condition. He is the author of a story collection, Curse of the Fig, published by Gadsden Publishers in 2018. A rave review of the book appeared in the Zambia Daily Mail. The book became one of the required texts for students pursuing an MA in Literature at the University of Zambia. It was also approved by the Curriculum Development Centre as a supplementary literature text for secondary schools in Zambia. Jacob lives with his family in Lusaka. He received an MA in History from the University of Zambia in 2020. When he is not writing or reading or being inspired by silence, he likes to watch a good drama, thriller or mystery. He is currently working on a novel.
Kevin Mogotsi (Botswana) studied BA (Hons) Broadcasting and Journalism as an undergraduate at Limkokwing University in Gaborone, where his interest for writing was nurtured. Shortly thereafter, he started writing short films, plays and short stories.
Mbozi Haimbe (Zambia) was born and raised in Lusaka, Zambia and lives in the Norfolk, UK with her family. A qualified Social Worker by profession, Mbozi’s short story ‘Madam’s Sister’ won the Africa region prize of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2019, and a 2020 PEN America/Robert J. Dau Prize. Mbozi has a Master of Studies in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. She was awarded a Develop Your Creative Practice award by Arts Council England in January 2020. She is currently working on her debut novel, an Afrofuturistic story loosely based on the Makishi masquerade traditions of the North-western people of Zambia.
Idza Luhumyo (Kenya) is a Kenyan writer with training in screenwriting and a background in law. Her artistic practice lies at the intersection of law, film, and literature. She is currently studying towards an MA in Comparative Literature at SOAS, University of London. She is the first ever recipient of the inaugural Margaret Busby New Daughters of Africa Award.
Alithnayn Abdulkareem (Nigeria). An alumnus of Chimamanda Adichie’s Farafina workshop, Alithnayn Abdulkareem’s work has been featured in Quartz, Ozy, ZAM, Wasafiri, Popula, Africa Is A Country, and Catapult among others. She was longlisted for the 2018 Short Story Day Africa prize and in 2020 she was part of the critics Academy at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.
Yefon Isabelle (Cameroon) is a Cameroonian writer, jurist, feminist and determinist. She has authored a good number of books and numerous works of poetry. She is unique and famed for her signature avant-garde style of writing which stands out amongst the lot. She resides in the North West Region of Cameroon, where she enjoys taking hikes, adventures into the wild and to the hilly landscapes.
Edwin Okolo (Nigeria) seeks to explore through his fiction lived experiences that are alien to him because of his gender and race. He has written for several blogs and literary magazines including Kalahari Review, The Lonely Crowd, speculative fiction at Omenana, Sable Lit Mag and a wildly popular webseries at TheNakedConvos.com. He is currently an editor at Stories.ng and finishing his first novel.
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