Why You Should Read Our 2020 Fall Issue

If you’ve ever said “There aren’t enough African stories,” this issue will make you eat those words.

Our 2020 Fall Issue is packed with fiction and poetry that proves—without a doubt—that African writing is not just “catching up” with any canon. It’s building its own.

Here’s what you’ll find inside, and why it matters.

1. Because it opens with a confession that destroys you in one breath

T.J. Benson’s “Listen” is the kind of story that grabs you by the collar from the very first line:

“Listen to me, Papa loved us, you have to believe this…”

What follows is one unbroken, breathless paragraph that feels like a man talking for the last time in his life—because he is.

Why you should read it:

• It’s a masterclass in voice. The narrator’s mix of English and pidgin, his guilt, love, and desperation—all carried in one unstoppable sentence—will stay with you.
• It tackles family violence, addiction, war trauma, and brotherhood without slipping into cliché or self-pity.
• It asks a brutal question: What does it cost to protect someone you love from the worst version of their own father—and from themselves?

If you want to learn how to write a monologue that feels like a life-or-death confession, you need this piece.

2. Because “death is no parenthesis" shows how sex, faith, and grief collide in a single life

Kayode Faniyi’s “death is no parenthesis" is restless, sharp, and messy in the best way. It moves from church worship and campus sex, to Lagos traffic, to complicated families, to the slow realization that a casual relationship has become the axis of someone’s life.

Why you should read it:

• It captures contemporary Nigerian life with painful accuracy:  
• Military checkpoints  
• Church-as-performance  
• The way we talk around grief instead of through it
• It refuses neat morality. This is a story of sex, betrayal, love, and mourning—and it never tells you how to feel.
• Stylistically, it’s bold: long, winding sentences, abrupt breaks, humor laid right next to heartbreak.

If you like fiction that reads like someone thinking at full speed—funny in one line and devastating in the next—this one is for you.

3. Because “Arrhythmia” dares to say the quiet parts out loud

In Aquilar Monnatlala’s “Arrhythmia,” the walls between rooms—and between people—are thin. A queer couple in South Africa tries to build a life under the weight of:

• Family expectations
• Homophobia
• Financial pressure
• The desperate need to be seen and loved

Why you should read it:

• It tackles queer African domestic life without exoticizing it. The drama is intimate, not performative.
• It shows how desire, guilt, and survival can twist even the best intentions.
• The writing is lush and precise: city nights, club scenes, workplace stress, unspoken resentments—they all pulse under the surface.

If you want stories where queerness is central but not flattened into tragedy or tokenism, “Arrhythmia” is essential.

4. Because “Guidelines for Dating an Alien Girl” is the speculative handbook you didn’t know you needed

If you think African fiction can’t be playful and wildly imaginative at the same time, Nnamdi Anyadu’s “Guidelines for Dating an Alien Girl” is here to prove you wrong.

Presented as a tongue-in-cheek manual—“my guy, listen”—it’s about:

• Alien girls in the big city  
• Masquerades, space tech, and New Yam festivals  
• Intergalactic dating etiquette indistinctly Nigerian settings  

Why you should read it:

• It’s laugh-out-loud funny and deeply clever.
• It blends sci-fi, satire, and Nigerian street wisdom effortlessly.
• Under the humor, it quietly asks:  
• What does it mean to love the Other?  
• Who gets to belong?  
• What happens when “normal” meets “not-from-here”?

If you’re interested in African futurism, speculative fiction, or just want proof that African stories can be as weird and wild as anything on the planet, this piece delivers.

5. Because the poetry refuses to let grief beneat or distant

Abu Bakr Sadiq’s “Ballads of Obliteration” is not interested in comforting you.

It moves through:

• A mother’s death
• A father’s emotional breakdown
• Boys trying to talk about distant fathers in barbershops and train stations
• Teenagers fading from life “in their heads”

Why you should read it:

• The language is visceral and visual:

“I’m at the barbershop to cut something that isn’t my hair”

• It confronts loss, mental health ,and memory in a culture that often avoids those conversations.
• The poem refuses to turn grief into something pretty and manageable. It leaves it jagged—because that’s what grief is.

If you’ve lost someone, if you’re tired of “inspirational” takes on death, this poem will recognize you.

6. Because “A Separation in 7 Fragments” understands modern love too well

Noella Moshi’s “A Separation in 7 Fragments” captures an entire relationship—from first date to after-collapse—in seven short sections.

We move from:

• Awkward pizza in Yaba
• Seafront dinners and dance parties
• Rainy days in bed
• To the numbness of seeing an ex happy with someone new on Instagram

Why you should read it:

• It perfectly captures the Lagos of young professionals trying to love and leave.
• It’s about distance—geographical, emotional, digital—and how separation doesn’t always happen when someone exits a room; sometimes it happens weeks later, in the bathroom, with your phone in your hand.
• It holds space for the quiet realization:

“I am whole.”

If you’ve loved someone who left, or if you’re writing about breakups in the age of social media, this is a model of subtle, emotionally precise storytelling.

8. Because “African Stories Go Global” isn’t a slogan here—it’s the work

This issue came out of a world already in crisis(2020), and it reads like writers deciding: We will not wait for permission.

You should read it because:

- It proves African writers can handle intimacy and brutality, comedy and grief, realism and futurism—often in the same breath.

- It reminds us that our lives, in all their complexity—family curses, sex on thin mattresses, alien girlfriends at New Yam festivals, fathers who fail us, mothers who leave too soon, Lagos traffic, Soweto clubs, Instagram heartbreak—are enough.

We don’t need to dilute them. We just need to tell them well.

In this issue, they are told very well.