Living in the Melancholony: A Conversation on African and Afro-diasporic Contemporary Writing

Join us for a special event on contemporary African and Afro-diasporic writing with Sulaiman Addonia, Brian Chikwava, Shady Lewis, and Fiston Mwanza Mujila and his translator Roland Glasser – chaired by Irenosen Okojie – at Bard Books in East London on 19 May 2026. 

'Living in the Melancholony' aims to describe both the structures and affects of living in a world founded on extractive systems and logics. The event is titled after the Editorial of our 125th issue, which features a range of writing from across the African continent, evoking the varied emotions, grammars, textures, and sensations of what it is like to live in certain worlds or 'melancholonies' from distinct African and Afro-diasporic perspectives.

Together, these fiction writers will discuss how their work speaks to colonial and racial capitalist legacies through blending and often queering different forms, registers, and temporalities. The authors will offer readings from their latest novels, followed by a panel conversation moderated by Irenosen Okojie.

When: Tuesday, 19 May, 7-9.30pm (doors open 6.30pm)
Where: Bard Books, 341-343 Roman Road, Bow, London, E3 5QR
Tickets: £5 (redeemable against the cost of a book, or copy of Wasafiri purchased on the night)

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Sulaiman Addonia is an Eritrean Ethiopian British novelist. He spent his early life in a refugee camp in Sudan, and his early teens in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He arrived in London as an underage unaccompanied refugee without a word of English and went on to earn an MA in Development Studies from SOAS and a BSc in Economics from UCL. His first novel, The Consequences of Love (Chatto & Windus, 2008), was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and was translated into more than 20 languages. His second novel, Silence is My Mother Tongue (Indigo Press, 2019; Graywolf, 2020), was a Finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards 2021, the Firecracker (CLMP) Awards, the inaugural African Literary Award from The Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco, and longlisted for the 2019 Orwell Prize for Fiction. Addonia’s essays appear in LitHub, Granta, Freeman’s, The New York Times, De Standaard, and Passa Porta. The Seers was published in 2024, and longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize and the RSL Ondaatje Prize. Addonia currently lives in Brussels where he founded the Creative Writing Academy for Refugees & Asylum Seekers and the Asmara-Addis Literary Festival In Exile (AALFIE), selected in 2022 as one of the top 40 literary festivals in the world. In 2021 he was awarded Belgium’s Golden Afro Artistic Award for Literature, and in 2022 he was elected as a Fellow of Royal Society of Literature (RSL). 

Brian Chikwava is the author of Harare North (Jonathan Cape, 2009). He’s a past winner of the Caine Prize for African Short Fiction. His work has appeared in short story anthologies published by Picador, Granta, Weaver Press, Jacana, and Umuzi; it has also been aired on BBC Radios 3 and 4 and BBC World Service. Brian has previously held fellowships at Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies (South Africa), the Civitella Ranieri Foundation (Italy), Maison Dora Maar (France), Santa Maddalena Foundation (Italy), Marguerite Yourcenar Villa (France), and the University of East Anglia (Charles Pick Fellowship). His second novel, Shamiso, was published by Canongate in 2025. 

Roland Glasser grew up in London, studied French and Theatre Studies at Aberystwyth University (Wales) and Film and Dramatic Arts at the University of Caen (Normandy), before spending a decade living in Paris, where he developed a successful career in translation, literary editing, and theatre lighting design. His translation of Adéline Dieudonné’s best-selling Real Life was shortlisted for the Scott-Moncrieff Prize. He has contributed articles and essays to a range of publications and is a co-founder of The Starling Bureau, a London-based collective of literary translators. 

Shady Lewis, born 1978, is an Egyptian novelist and journalist whose writing centres on cultural and political intersections within and beyond the Arab world. He lives in London, where he has spent many years employed by the National Health Service and local authority housing departments. He has published three novels in Arabic to date – The Lord’s Ways (2018), On the Greenwich Line (2019), and A Brief History of Genesis and Eastern Cairo (2021) – each of which engage with the social history of Coptic Christians and trajectories of migration from Egypt to the West, and a travel diary, Death Tourism, or a Comedy of Foreigners (2024). On the Greenwich Line has also been translated into German, French, and Italian; the French translation was shortlisted for the 2023 Prix de la littérature arabe and the English translation was longlisted for the 2026 Queen Mary Small Press Fiction Prize. 

Fiston Mwanza Mujila was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo and lives today in Austria. His debut novel, Tram 83 (translated by Roland Glasser), won the Etisalat Prize for Literature and the German International Literature Award, and was longlisted for the International Booker Prize and the Prix littéraire du Monde. His second novel, The Villain’s Dance, was a National Book Award finalist. Two collections of his poetry have been published in English: The River in the Belly and The Slaughterhouse of Dreams (both translated by J Bret Maney). He also writes plays and opera libretti, and performs his texts in collaboration with contemporary musicians. In 2025, he was awarded the Franz Nabl Prize by the City of Graz. His writing responds to political turbulence in his native country and frequently foregrounds its debt to jazz. 

Irenosen Okojie is an award-winning Nigerian British author whose work pushes the boundaries of form, language, and ideas. Her novels, Curandera and Butterfly Fish, and short story collections, Speak Gigantular and Nudibranch, have won and been nominated for multiple awards. Her writing has been featured in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Observer, Guardian, and Huffington Post. She co-presented the BBC's Turn Up for The Books podcast, alongside Simon Savidge and Bastille frontman Dan Smith. Her work has been optioned for the screen. She has judged various literary prizes including the BBC National Short Story Award and the Dublin Literary Award. She was a judge for the 2023 Women's Prize for Fiction. Formerly the Vice Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, she was awarded an MBE For Services to Literature in 2021 and selected as a visionary talent in The Next 25 Visionaries to Watch list. She is the director and founder of Black to the Future Festival and the chair of the 2026 Dylan Thomas Prize.