The Business of Publishing: AfricanFuturism Edition

Enoch Pratt Free Library Podcast

Are you interested in getting your writing published? Do you want tips and tricks on how to become a published author of Africanfuturistic novels or short stories? Or learn how to self-publish in the genre?

Then join us for a panel discussion and Q&A on how the genre reflects the societal and cultural struggles of African people and their descendants here and abroad. Come along on a journey to explore how to get this type of work published in a world where black and brown people are still seen as the “other”.

Panelists include: Nnedi Okorafor, Jalynn Harris, Saida Agostini, and Afua Richardson.

Nnedi Okorafor is a Nigerian-American author of Africanfuturism and Africanjujuism for children and adults. Her works include WHO FEARS DEATH (in development at HBO into a TV series), the BINTI novella trilogy, THE BOOK OF PHOENIX, the AKATA books and LAGOON. She is the winner of Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Locus and Lodestar Awards and her debut novel ZAHRAH THE WINDSEEKER won the prestigious Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature. Her next novel, IKENGA, will be in stores August 2020.

Nnedi has also written comics for Marvel, including BLACK PANTHER: LONG LIVE THE KING and WAKANDA FOREVER (featuring the Dora Milaje) and the SHURI series, an Africanfuturist comic series LAGUARDIA (from Dark Horse) and her short memoir BROKEN PLACES AND OUTER SPACES. Nnedi is also cowriter the adaptation of Octavia Butler’s WILD SEED with Viola Davis and Kenyan film director Wanuri Kahiu. Nnedi holds a PhD (literature) and two MAs (journalism and literature). She lives with her daughter Anyaugo and family in Illinois.

Saida Agostini is a queer Afro-Guyanese poet whose work explores the ways that Black folks harness mythology to enter the fantastic. Saida’s poetry is featured and/or forthcoming in Plume, Barrelhouse Magazine, the Black Ladies Brunch Collective's anthology, Not Without Our Laughter, amongst other publications. Her first collection of poems, just let the dead in, was a finalist for the Center of African American Poetry & Poetics’ 2020 Book Prize, as well as the New Issues Poetry Prize. Her chapbook, STUNT (Neon Hemlock Press, October 2020) explores the history of Nellie Jackson, a Black woman entrepreneur who operated a brothel for sixty years in Natchez, Mississippi.

A Cave Canem Graduate Fellow and Pushcart Prize nominee, Saida has been awarded honors and support for her work by the Watering Hole and Blue Mountain Center, as well as a 2018 Rubys Grant funding travel to Guyana to support the completion of her first manuscript. She lives online at saidaagostini.com

Jalynn Harris is a poet, educator, and book designer from Baltimore, MD. She founded SoftSavagePress for the sole purpose of promoting visual and literary works by Black people. She earned her MFA from the University of Baltimore, where she was the inaugural recipient of Michael F. Klein fellowship for social justice. Her work has been featured in Transition Magazine, Little Patuxent Review, Scalawag, and elsewhere. Exit Thru the Afro, queer museum in verse, is her first poetry chapbook.

Recorded On: Thursday, February 18, 2021