Abdul Raafi Mohammed is a film producer and director, creative consultant and founder of Sanatu Zambang Studios. Abdul Raafi documentary on Access to Clean Water received a nomination at the Water Film Festival and the Golden Movie Awards Africa 2016. Abdul Raafi Mohammed worked for Countrywise Communication Ghana, as a film producer, director and video editor between 2013 to 2016.

At Countrywise Ghana, Abdul Raafi directed and edited agricultural films for organic and institutions such as Savannah Agriculture Research Institute, AGRA, IPA , IFDC, Cabi plantwise Access Agriculture, and a drama with UNICEF.

Between 2016 to 2017, he produced StarX TV, an entertainment show which featured trending videos from both Northern and Southern parts of Ghana.

From 2017 to 2022, Abdul Raafi has been a creative consultant, film producer, and director for documentaries namely, Spirit of the child, A day in the life, AITI Kace, Exploring Northern Ghana Culture with Carole Donkers, Hajia Mariam Alolo Biography Series, Herpol Africa Docu-series, Enough (Oxfam SGBV campaign), Young Female Parliament debate catalogue, Star Ghana Active Citizenship.

Abdul Raafi has also scripted radio drama productions for African Women's Development Fund and centre for science and health communications. He also produced a picture booklet for WaterAid Ghana MRR project in partnership with WASH United.

Abdul Raafi also led the staged drama production of "Better Safe Than Sorry" with Kalpohin Senior High School with support from Marie Stopes Ghana.

Abdul Raafi host a podcast series titled unconventional with Rafiu fishbone where he interviews guests from all areas of works about their unconventional approaches to their careers.

Abena Maryann is a podcaster, book reviewer and a literary event organiser.

Adjoa Ohenewa Ofei is a second year resident in Anaesthesiology in the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, Accra. While medicine has given her the predominant window through which she views life, her faith, femininity, culture and experiences lend a prismatic dimension to that window. Writing has always provided a means of self-expression. Themes surrounding women and female empowerment, Ghanaian and global social issues, as well as the practice of medicine, perceptions of wellness and illness, and doctor-patient interactions are my main interests. Adjoa shares most of her writing on Facebook and her blog www.undoctoredsound.blogspot.com

Aekua Bobson runs several women's book clubs. Adulthood makes it difficult to squeeze in reading time. The book clubs are meant to encourage women to read for leisure and to carve out a space for themselves through books. She is currently working on her doctorate in Literature. Her research interest is in trauma and ancestral connections between African descendants in the Diaspora and Africa. Prior to this, she taught English in some international schools.

Agnes Titriku is a parliamentary development expert with fourteen years’ experience of active engagement in the field of Parliamentary Democracy and Governance. She is the Programs Manager for the African Centre for Parliamentary Affairs (ACEPA) where she is involved in the design and implementation of various programs for several African Parliaments and parliaments outside the continent, with a focus on capacity building, institutional development, strategic planning, parliamentary oversight, gender, and poverty reduction. She holds a Master of Arts in Social Policy Studies from the University of Ghana and is very passionate about the Arts and Literature.

Agur Schiff was born in Tel Aviv in 1955. Studied at St. Martin's School of Art in London (specialized in animation) from 1979 to 1981, and at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, from 1984 to 1985. Schiff won critical acclaim as a filmmaker before turning to writing in the 1990's. He published two collections of short stories, Dying Animals and Bad Weather (Keter Publishing House, Jerusalem, 1995) and Stories for Short Trips (Hakibbutz Ha'meuchad Publishaers, Tel Aviv, 1999) as well as six novels: Bad Habits (Zmora-Bitan Publishers, Tel Aviv, 2004), What You Wished For (Zmora-Bitan Publishers, Tel Aviv, 2007), In the Sand (Am Oved Publishers, Tel Aviv, 2010), The Latecomers (Am Oved Publishers, Tel Aviv, 2013 shortlisted for Sappir Prize 2014), Anonymity (Am Oved Publishers, Tel Aviv, 2017), Professor Schiff's Guilt (Achuzat Bayit Publishing House, Tel Aviv, 2021) of which an English translation is due to be published in May 2023 by New Vessel Press, New York.

Until his retirement in February 2022, Schiff served as a professor at the Screen Based Arts dept. of the Bezalel Academy of Art & Design in Jerusalem, where he taught dramatic writing and gave various courses relating to cinematic concepts.

Schiff lives in Tel Aviv with his wife Ruti and has a son and a daughter.

Akua Serwaa Amankwah is an interdisciplinary creative artist from Ghana with research interests in Children’s Literature, Creative Writing, (Digital African) Literature, Ghanaian history, and Photography. Her stories have been published in The Mirror and Flash Fiction Ghana, as well as the Kenkey for Ewes, Resilience, and A Mind to Silence anthologies. She won the Worldreader Inspire Us Writing contest in 2019, and the Imagining Early Accra competition in 2021. She is an alumna of the 2021 Tampered Press Fiction Workshop and the 2022 AKO Caine Prize Writing Workshop. She is currently working on three collections of stories for children.

Akua has a BA in English and is anticipating an MPhil in English (Literature) from the University of Ghana. She is the founder and Creative Lead of Studio Mansa, a brand that offers an interdisciplinary perspective by exploring photography, films, and (visual) art, design, and text using literature. She currently works with medical data in health technology.

Alba Kunadu S. Amoo-Gottfried, graduated as a Film Editor from the Cuban film school and currently works as a writer and audio-visual content producer.

She freelanced for over 10 years as a scriptwriter and editor for the acclaimed BBC World Services’ radio drama Story Story and as a writer and director for the television drama Wetin Dey.

She has worked with several international and national productions, including MTV, CNN and Discovery Channel.

FABteen, a magazine style TV show for teen girls by teen girls, shown on GHOne TV in 2021, is her most recent project, as creator, producer and director.

Alba is also the author of the books The Imported Ghanaian and A place of Beautiful Nonsense.

Alice Johnson is a Ghanaian-Nigerian storyteller who is passionate about telling stories in front of or behind the scenes. She has training from film school, Ghana Broadcasting Corporation TV training school and a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Arts from the University of Education, Winneba. She was a 2021 Accra Architectural Archive fellow, Ananse and Climate Change co-creation workshop fellow and New Folk(lore) artist where she churned out content for stage like her one woman show ‘The legend of Fankobaa’ and two children plays ‘Ananse and the last tree’ and ‘Maafia and the ruffled dress’. She is currently a film student at Multichoice Talent Factory in affiliation with Henley Business School, Pan Atlantic University and New York Film Academy. In a soon to be released film; “REVISIT”, which will air on Showmax and African Magic channels on DSTV, Alice puts her vocals, acting and writing skills to play. She has an undying enthusiasm to acquire knowledge and impart to others. When Alice is not telling stories, you may find her singing her heart out at a karaoke bar, chatting up a storm and spending time with friends and family.

Ama Asantewa Diaka is a storyteller who is committed to community. She is the founder of Tampered Press, - a literary and arts journal for Ghanaians and Africans, and Black Girls Glow, an initiative to foster collaboration among black women creatives. She is the author of the collections You too will know me and Woman, Eat me Whole.

Ama Dadson is the Founder & CEO of AkooBooks Audio Ltd, Ghana's first publisher and a digital streaming platform for Black/African audiobooks and spoken word. Founded in 2017, she was inspired by her mother, a children's book author who lost her sight, to create accessible African audiobooks.

Ama is passionate about the opportunities offered by digital reading to combat illiteracy in Africa and is dedicated to finding indigenous narrators who can accurately portray African voices, characters and experiences.

Ama worked at the University of Ghana for over a decade and a half in several capacities including Deputy Director of IT Services. Ama also previously worked for UNEP DTIE, where she acted as adviser on matters related to ICT and e-sustainability and assisted with UNEP industry outreach activities, in particular those related to the World Summit for the Information Society (WSIS).

Ama was awarded Women in Tech Africa Startup of the Year in 2021. She has previously served as a jury member for the Prix Ars Electronica Digital Communities category.

Amandzeba is certainly a great highlife artiste; his contribution to the highlife industry will for long be indispensable. The uniqueness of his music has won him a number of awards, including the ultimate prize at the 7th International Alphine festival held in Saas-Fee, a tourist village in Switzerland. He became known as part of a popular band Nakorex, which was formed in 1992 with Akosua Agyapong and Rex Omar. A leading member of the group, he became famous through “Wogbejeke”, a track which was released in 2000 and created waves in several parts of the world.

Following the success of “Wogbejeke”, he adopted the name Amandzeba, meaning "Tradition Child" or "Custom Child", to reflect his African roots. In January 2020, he signed with US label Jah Mikal Entertainment and announced the release of a new album and a collaboration with the US rapper, Michael Morgan, to create a remix of “Wogbejeke”.

With several albums to his credit, Amandzeba has delighted music lovers in several countries in Europe, the United States and other parts of Africa. His capacity to utilize rhymes in his rich lyrics, which are based on socio-political issues and history sets him apart from his peers.

Amarachukwu Chimeka holds a B.A. and an M.A. from the universities of Benin and Lagos, Nigeria, and a Diplome D'etude en Langue Francais.

She was once a recepient of the University of Lagos School of Postgraduate Studies' Graduate Fellowship Award. She is a seasoned Copyeditor, Profreader, Copywriter, and Publisher with certifications from the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (former SFEP), UK; Publishing Training Centre (former BookHouse), UK; ACES-The Society for Editing (former American Copy Editors Society), USA; and Poynter Institute (of Journalism), USA. She is also currently listed in the Publishing Qualifications Board (PQB) Directory in the UK and is a member of the Chartered Institute of Editors and Proofreaders, UK, and ACES (American Copy Editors' Society), USA.

She edits and publishes books in English and Igbo, is the founder of Purple Shelves, a publishing and literacy development company, and one of the founders of The Village Square Journal.

As a literary activist, she has spearheaded several literary campaigns and book drives and actively promotes the translation of children's books into Nigerian indigenous languages. In line with the United Nations' declaration of 2020 as The Year of Indigenous Languages, she launched the #ReadIgboChallenge in July 2020 that saw an upsurge in the demand and sales of Igbo books—a challenge that caught the attention of and was promoted by BBC Ịgbo.

In 2021, she began a campaign on Twitter to place books in the hands of 1000 children in rural communities, every year. This goal was met in 52 days in 2021 within which books were sent to children in rural communities in Anambra, Abia, Enugu, Ebonyi, Bayelsa, Rivers, and Taraba states as well as three orphanage homes in Lagos. In 2022, the campaign went on to reach children in juvenile prisons and more orphanage homes with books.

She also facilitates book clubs for private schools and corporate organisations. Because of her passion for raising the next generation of readers and her love for children, she has gone on to author a series of children's books.

Amarachukwu Chimeka is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of The Everyday Chapter, a literary community for Gen Zs and Millennials with hubs in Ibadan, Lagos, Port Harcourt, and Abuja. She is also the Corporate Social Responsibility Administrator for the recently-launched sports reality TV Show, Africa Star X.

In December 2021, she became the first non-American to win the Richard S Holden Diversity Fellowship for editors funded by the Dow Jones News Fund and the Scripps Howard Fund in the USA.

Amarachukwu has graced local and international panels in the capacity of moderator and panelist and served as judge of literary contests. In her spare time she writes movie reviews, poems, short stories, or columns for literary blogs. She has received several awards, including a Creative Intelligence Award by the Young Men and Women Creative Association.

Dr. Amy Shimshon-Santo is a writer and educator who believes that creativity is a powerful tool for personal and social transformation. She is the author of Catastrophic Molting (Flowersong Press, 2022), Even the Milky Way is Undocumented (Unsolicited Press, 2020), and the chapbook Endless Bowls of Sky (Placeholder Press, 2020). She has been nominated for an Emmy Award, three Pushcart Prizes in poetry and creative nonfiction, a Rainbow Reads Award and Best of the Net in poetry, and earned national recognition on the honor roll of service learning. Her writing appears in Prairie Schooner, ArtPlace America, Zócalo Public Square, Entropy, Tilt West, Boom CA, GeoHumanities; Education, Citizenship, and Social Justice, and elsewhere. She has edited two books amplifying community voices: Et Al (Illinois Open Publishing Network, 2022), and Arts = Education (UC Press, 2010). Her teaching career has spanned research universities, community centers, K-12 schools, arts organizations, and spaces of incarceration.

Connect at www.amyshimshon.com .

Anwuli is the publisher and co-founder of Narrative Landscape Press, an independent publishing company based in Lagos, Nigeria that has published authors such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Oyinkan Braithwaite, Chibundo Onuzo, Yejide Kilanko, Marlon James, Lupita Nyong’o, among others. She is an editor with 16 years’ experience, and co-founder of Society for Book & Magazine Editors of Nigeria, a non-profit that provides training and resources for editorial professionals. Anwuli is the editor of the 2022 AKO Caine Prize Anthology. She currently sits on the board of trustees of the World Economic Forum Global Shapers Lagos Hub and Open Country, a leading literary magazine.

Apiorkor [Seyiram Ashong-Abbey] is a Ghanaian Poet, Writer/Author, Literary Scholar and Critic, Media Practitioner, TED Speaker, Activist and Versatile Creative of Ga-Daŋme and Ewe ancestry. She is the author of The Matriarch’s Verse (a collection of Poetry, which is available on booknook.store and Amazon, both in Paperback and Kindle editions). Her work is noted for its rare narrative, prosaic, journalistic nature, which is uncommon in Poetry. Apiorkor reads her Poetry on stage and injects life into her poems with varied music forms, Contemporary Dance and alternative Art.

The Poetess performs within West Africa’s most sophisticated spaces and has been featured on two TEDx platforms. She has also been a speaker at Re:publica, the largest conference on Internet and Digital Society in Europe.

Again, Apiorkor is listed on TED.com as a headline performer, for TEDWomen 2020 and is an active member of TED's Red Circle Community for TED Speakers.

In October 2018, Apiorkor staged the maiden edition of her Poetry concert, dubbed "The Matriarch's Verse", at the plush Kempinski Hotel Gold Coast City, Accra. Almost four years down the line, it remains Ghana's largest annual Poetry event, to be hosted by an individual artist, having featured over forty supporting Creative Arts acts and having attracted an audience of almost three thousand people, representative of various industries and walks of life.

Over the past three and a half years, Apiorkor has led a campaign to have Ghanaian (and African) Poets, Poetry, and Artists properly documented in local media sources and on Wikipedia. Her efforts have led to the gains that the Wikimedia User Group in Ghana is currently making, in this regard.

Another project in progress is her research into and development of the ideology/ concept of Verse Journalism, which highlights the symbiotic relationship between Poetry (Verse) and Journalism.

She is a member of the National Executive Committee of the Ghana Association of Writers (GAW), a member of the Poetry Association of Ghana Executive Board and a Director-At-Large of the Democrats Abroad Africa Committee's ExCom, as the Coordinator of Democrats Abroad - Ghana. Again, Apiorkor is a member of a newly-formed standing committee of the Creative Arts Agency (Ghana) Initiative on developing Creative Arts Education in Ghana, under the auspices of Ghana's Ministry of Tourism, Arts & Culture.

Her love for Diplomacy has led her to become a Fellow and the Moderator-in-Residence, of the Institute of International Affairs, Ghana. As well, she is an Editorial Advisor of the Influenc(Her) Project --- https://influencherproject.org/, working alongside CNN's former President, Pat Mitchell and The New York Times's former European Bureau Chief, Alison Smale - to elevate the global voices of women in Journalism and the Arts. Furthermore, she is a member of the Black Star International Film Festival (BSIFF) Advisory Board.

Apiorkor teaches, mentors and counsels Poets, Writers, Creatives and young people (especially young women). As a Media Practitioner, Apiorkor is Multi-format/ Multi-scale Television Producer & Programmer, with over 8,000 hours of content, to her credit. She is also a Multi-format Radio Producer & Programmer.

Additionally, she does Event design/ production/ management and is a compère & moderator. She is a copywriter, voice over artist and she designs and produces media advertising content.

Apiorkor is the Head of Programmes Production at Accra-based Citi 97.3 FM and Citi TV, where she also hosts Diplomatic License and What's Cooking?, while advocating for the causes of Literacy & Numeracy, appreciation of the Creative Arts & Art business, as well as Culture.

Social Media: @apiorkor Website: https://apiorkor.com/ Wiki: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apiorkor_Seyiram_Ashong-Abbey © APIORKOR 2022

Dr. Asangba Reginald Taluah is a senior lecturer at AAMUSTED, the erstwhile Kumasi and Ashanti Mampong campuses of the University of Education Winneba. His research areas include: Literary Linguistics, English Education, African Studies and Liberal Studies. His works have been published in both national and international anthologies. His poem, Mother was awarded the Castello Di Duino Poetry Prize in 2014, Italy.

Aseye Tamakloe is a filmmaker and lecturer at the National film and Television Institute in Accra. She is a co-programmer for the Film Africa Festival, London’s biggest celebration of African and African diaspora cinema presented by the Royal African Society. She was the Festival Manager/Director of the European Film Festival, Ghana (EUFFGH).

Aseye Tamakloe is the founder and festival director of NDIVA WOMEN’S FILM FESTIVAL. A festival that aims to create artistic platforms for the presentation and preservation of work by, for and about women. As a freelance editor her works include, award-winning films and television productions such as Perfect Picture and Different Shades of Blue by Shirley Frimpong-Manso, Who is Afraid of Ngugi by Manthia Diawara, Freetown by Garret Barty and Chronicles of Odumkrom: The Headmaster by Ernest Kofi Abbeyquaye. She recently directed and edited the critically acclaimed documentary film When Women Speak.

Audrey Obuobisa-Darko is a 22-year old author and video creator from Ghana. She is an alumnus of the 2022 Caine Prize Workshop, and the 2021 Amplify HQ Fellowship for African Content Creators. She has two self-published books, The Magic Basket (2012), and Wahala Dey (2014). Her works appear in Kalahari Review, The African Writer, Oriki Podcasts, and Reedsy. Her stories have been shortlisted for the K&L Prize for African Literature, and longlisted for the Wakini Kuria Award for African Literature. She recently won 1st Prize in the 2022 Perbi Cubs Creative Writing Competition. She loves to explore mental health, sexuality, and Africanfuturism in her writing. When Audrey is not writing, she's either pursuing her degree in Computer Science at Ashesi University, or exploring documentary filmmaking. Link to her fiction and video works: linktr.ee/audreyob Twitter @audreyobdarko

Aziza Atta is a multi-lingual Corporate Lawyer, e-commerce entrepreneur and development consultant with over 25 years of work experience. Aziza Atta is the CEO and Founder of Ozoza Lifestyle, a Fashion Line and International Online Shop that specialises in items Made in Africa and promoting African Culture and Heritage (www.ozozalifestyle.com). Ozoza Lifestyle curates exhibitions, gives presentations and produces blogs and a book club seeking to increase awareness about African History and Heritage globally. Her Crucial Conversations Podcast has received critical acclaim for addressing key issues with filmmakers, writers and thought leaders in Africa.

She studied Law at the University of Manchester and the Ghana School of Law. Aziza received a Masters in Law from University College London and a Diploma in Legal Practice from London Guildhall University. She worked in London, Belgium, Dubai and West Africa for the International Law Firms Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Norton Rose Fulbright for many years. Aziza speaks English, French, Spanish, German and Ebira.

A’bena Awuku-Larbi is a polylingual poet, a legal practitioner, and a womanist. Her poems have appeared in the Contemporary Ghanaian Writers’ Series and The Big Yellow Post. She is an alumnus of the Mo Issa Workshop 2021 and co-founder of Happy Monthlies Ghana. Her professional background includes work on energy management, literary artistic activism campaigns with ActionAid, menstrual hygiene management with Happy Monthlies Ghana and gender-based violence awareness with Young Urban Women’s Movement Ghana. She writes about women and for women at thesecondwoman.com Dr. Amy Shimshon-Santo

Image credit Frederic FOUNEAU-3 Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse was born and raised in Rwanda. She fled to France in 1994 after surviving the genocide against the Tutsi. She studied political sciences and worked for several NGOs, living in different continents. She is now settled in Bordeaux.

She has published short-stories, poetry and two novels.

Her collection of short stories Ejo won several french literary awards. Her debut novel, All your children, scattered, was acclaimed by critics and won the Prix des cinq continents de la francophonie in 2020.

Benedicta Mawuena is a Ghanaian bookstagrammer and book reviewer.

Photo Credit Natascha Libbert

Bernard Akoi-Jackson (PhD), is a Ghanaian artist, writer, curator and educator who lives and works from Tema/Accra/Kumasi. He interrogates hybrid post-colonial identities, through ephemeral make-shift memorials and performative rituals of the mundane. His interests cut across forms and media. Using critical absurdity, he becomes the proverbial jester or Eṣu moving between genres. His multi-disciplinary, audience implicating installations and performative “pseudo-rituals”, have featured in exhibitions like An Age of Our Own Making (Reflection II), Roskilde Denmark, (2016); Silence Between The Lines, Kumasi, Ghana (2015), Material Effects, East Lansing, USA (2015), WATA don PASS: Looking West, Lagos and Malmö, Sweden (2015) and Time, Trade and Travel, Amsterdam and Accra, Ghana (2012 and 2013). He has co-curated exhibitions with blaxTARLINES, most prominent being The GOWN must go to TOWN (2015), Cornfields in Accra, (2016) and Orderly Disorderly, (2017). Akoi-Jackson holds a PhD in Painting and Sculpture from the College of Art and Built Environment, (KNUST), Kumasi, where he also lectures with particular interest in disruption and the revolutionary potential in contemporary art practice.

He is drawn to the politics of such vestiges of colonialist encounter as the overtly bureaucratic rituals that lead to absurdist stalemate in society. By means of paintings, performances, videos, murals, installations and texts, he creates immersive, absurdist interventions and situations that are both atmospherically dense, yet permeable to critical audience reactions. Within his works a plurality of the senses are engage, initiating processes of action, reflection with a penchant for the disruptive. He curated the inaugural exhibition: “Galle Winston Kofi Dawson: In Pursuit of something ‘Beautiful’, perhaps...” at the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (SCCA), Tamale, Ghana. He co-curated the inaugural Stellenbosch Triennale in Stellenbosch, South Africa. Akoi-Jackson is a member of the Ghanaian Artist Collective Exit Frame. He also leads the performative lab, eX-para-Mental.

Bilikis Giwah is a Documentary Film Maker and a Producer with Metro Television in Accra.

Bios Diallo est un écrivain Mauritanien, touche à tout. Il a publié un essai, De la naissance au mariage chez les Peuls de Mauritanie avec une préface du Sénégalais Cheikh Hamidou Kane (Karthala, 2004), un roman Une Vie de Sébile (Harmattan, 2010) et trois recueils de poésie : Les Pleurs de l’arc-en-ciel (Harmattan, 2002) et Les Os de la terre (Harmattan, 2009) et La Saigne (Obsidiane, 2021).

Journaliste, Bios a eu le privilège d’interviewer Aimé Césaire, et de collaborer à Césaire et nous (Cauris éditions, 2003). Bios Diallo dirige depuis 2010 les Rencontres littéraires Traversées Mauritanides en Mauritanie qui accueillent des écrivains du monde entier.

Camynta Baezie is currently the President of the Ghana Association of Writers. He has served as the General Secretary of the Association as a member of the He is currently a member of the GAW Advisory Board. He also served as a member of the National Media Commission. He worked with the team that revived GAW in 2009 and served with the Executive Committee until 2019.

Camynta Baezie lectures at the Department of Planning, KNUST on Mondays and spends the rest of the week in Accra on consultancies. Camynta Baezie has excellent people skills and leadership qualities.

Chef Binta is a multi award winning chef born and raised in Freetown, Sierra Leone to first generation Sierra Leonean Fulanis of Guinean descent. She is a modern day nomadic chef. Like her ancestors, Binta has traveled to many countries to explore different cooking techniques, ingredients and ways of life. At Fulani Kitchen, she combines her nomadic Fulani roots, classical training and love for rural life and nature to create modern dishes, while maintaining the simplicity and authenticity of Fulani culture. By creating a traditional setting, discussing Fulani culture and serving ancient grains, indigenous spices and other exciting West-African ingredients in an interactive way, Binta triggers all senses and takes you to a whole new world.

Chinweizu is an anti-Continentalism Pan-Africanist, as well as a historian. He is writing a seven-volume book titled A Maafa-centric History of Pan-Africanism, 1440-2015. His books include, The West and the Rest of Us (1975); Decolonising the African Mind (1987); Voices from 20th-Century Africa (1988); Anatomy of Female Power(1990); Caliphate Colonialism: The Taproot of the Trouble with Nigeria(2015).

He is a co-author of Towards the Decolonization of African Literature(1980) and a contributor to Volume 8 of the Unesco General History of Africa, (1993). His volume of poetry, Invocations and Admonitions, won the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) poetry prize for 1985. He received a 2013 Silverbird Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to African Letters.

Chuma Nwokolo is a writer, lawyer and convener of the Bribecode Campaign. His 2018 novel, The Extinction of Menai, centres issues of language and cultural extinction. He has published other novels, poetry collections, short story collections, as well as essays, and has been translated into other languages.

Clifton Gachagua is the author of Madman at Kilifi and appears in a chapbook box set, Seven New Generation African Poets (University of Nebraska Press).

Gachagua was an editor at Kwani?

His work appears in Naijographia, Manchester Review, Saraba, Jalada, Kwani?, Poetry Foundation, The Gonjon Pin and Other Stories (Caine Prize Anthology), AfroSF: Science Fiction by African Writers, Sunspot Jungle, Enkare, Africa39, PEN Foundation: New Voices, Harvard Divinity Journal, among others.

He writes for TV and radio. He is a founding member and contributing editor at DRR (down river road).

D. Othniel Forte is a Liberian educator, author and publisher. He is the Publisher at FORTE Publications International, a 100 percent Liberian owned publishing house and the largest in the country. He edits KWEE, the Liberian Literary Magazine, and is Team Leader at Monrovia READS, a reading literacy NGO that encourages reading across Liberia.

Dany Asase, creatively known as Dagny Zenovia, has a background in journalism, law, and digital content creation. Her published multi-media works focus on topics ranging from self-development, advocacy, and a holistic lifestyle. Currently, she is a time traveler at Bandele Muse, an inner-galactic African life and style experience / Afrofuturistic boutique providing statement fashion pieces and magical adventures. When she is not working or creating, she enjoys indulging in her love for Afrofuturism and freedom.

Dr Eghosa Imasuen is a Nigerian writer and co-founder of Narrative Landscape Press Limited.

He graduated with a 1999 medical degree from the University of Benin. His second novel, Fine Boys, a coming-of-age novel, was received to wide acclaim in 2012 and was published in America by the Ohio University Press’ Modern African Writers Series in 2021.

Eghosa Imasuen teaches creative Writing at the annual Chimamanda Adichie Creative Writing Workshop. He lives in Lagos with his wife and twin sons.

Dr Wale (Olawale) Okediran, a Medical Doctor by training and a former Member of the Nigerian Parliament.

A published author of 14 novels and two collections of Travel Stories some of which have won Literary Prizes within and outside Nigeria, the film adaptation of his award winning novel Tenants of the House (directed by Kunle Afolayan) was adopted in November 2021 by NETFLIX for a three-year global streaming contract.

In 2010, he established the first Writers Residency in Nigeria, THE EBEDI INTERNATIONAL WRITERS RESIDENCY in Iseyin, Oyo State, Nigeria an initiative for the use of writers from all over the world.

Dr. Okediran who is a former National President Of the Association Of Nigerian Authors, is the current Secretary General of the Accra, Ghana based Pan African Writers Association (PAWA).

Dr. Ọbádélé Bakari Kambon, is a world-renowned linguist, scholar and the architect of Abibitumi, a large Black social education network.

He completed his PhD in Linguistics at the University of Ghana in 2012, winning the prestigious Vice-Chancellor’s award for the Best PhD Thesis in the Humanities.

He also won the 2016 Provost’s Publications Award for best article in the College of Humanities. In 2019 he was the recipient of the Marcus Mosiah Garvey Foundation award for excellence in Afrikan Studies and Education.

Dr. Ọbádélé Kambon was awarded the 2020/2021 University of Lagos (UNILAG) Lagos Area Cluster Centre (LACC) Fellowship where he contributed significantly to the work of “reconfiguring” Afrikan Studies.

He is an Associate Professor and Head of the Language, Literature and Drama Section of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana and is Editor-in-Chief of the Ghana Journal of Linguistics.

His research interests include Serial Verb Construction Nominalization, Historical Linguistics, Kemetology, & Afrikan=Black Liberation.

Efe Paul Azino is one of Nigeria’s best-known performance artists and poets. In 2015, he co-founded West Africa's first international poetry festival, the Lagos International Poetry Festival, which he currently directs. He is the author of the poetry collection For Broken Men Who Cross Often. His poems have been translated into Afrikaans, French, German and Mandarin.

Ekua Ekumah is a theatre practitioner and scholar who is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Theatre Arts, School of Performing Arts, University of Ghana. She is a trained actor, earning a BA (Hons) in Theatre Arts from Rose Bruford College of Speech and Drama, an MFA in Theatre Arts, from the University of Ghana, Legon. She obtained her PhD at Goldsmiths College, University of London with a thesis titled ‘Theatre, Performance, Representation: African Diasporic Identity on the British Stage’. Ekua’s main area of teaching is Acting/devising, Voice and Speech and her main research interests are in African diasporic identity and performance. She has served as the Head of Department of Theatre Arts and is currently the Artistic Director of Abibigromma, the Resident Theatre Company of the School of Performing Arts. She is currently an elected member of the Executive Committee of the International Federation of Theatre Research (IFTR). Ekua is one of the Co-Chairs of the Federations next conference to be held at the School of Performing Arts, University of Ghana, Legon, under the theme The Stories We tell, Myths, Myth Making and Performance. One of Ekua’s most recent projects was a cross cultural performance that sought to engage with the works and biography of the Ghanaian born and German raised philosopher Anton Wilhelm Amo. She is keen on transposing folktales onto the Ghanaian contemporary stage and adapting classic texts into Ghanaian contexts. Ekua is a lover of literature but does not find the time to read for pleasure. She has found solace in her recent discovery of audio books which has given her the opportunity to enter imaginative worlds drawing from her extensive experience in actor training and practice and providing voice for characters in these worlds. She has voiced characters in AAD Asiedu, DH Dzah and JJ Johnson’s Kenkey For Ewes & Other Very Short Stories, Ama Ata Aidoo’s No Sweetness Here, Mary Eshun’s Tuesday’s Child, Faceless and the relaunched edition of Mamle Kabu Wolo’s Kaya Girl.

Elizabeth Johnson is a writer, researcher and cultural producer. She works with the Writers Project of Ghana (WPG) as a media and programs coordinator as well as the Manager for the annual literary festival, Pa Gya! A Literary Festival in Accra. In 2020, she produced Womanfest for The Library of Africa and the African Diaspora . As a writer her stories, poetry and articles have featured in a number of publications and platforms, most recent is the 2022 Caine Prize Anthology for which her title was selected as the title of the Anthology. Elizabeth is currently a resident with Oroko Radio where she produces and hosts the MnR Show, a show dedicated to Highlife Music and Creatives. She is the co- creator of Art and Thought Conversation. She works as a Teaching Assistant at Ashesi University and moderates panel discussions and conversations for cultural organizations from time to time.

Elizabeth Nwarueze is Nigerian lawyer who holds a Bachelor of Laws Degree from University of Ibadan, Nigeria, Policy Certificate from the Moller Institute, University of Cambridge and a Bachelor of Civil Law Degree from University of Oxford. She was a participant and directed studies candidate at the 2022 Summer Courses of The Hague Academy of International Law and is generally interested in International Law and Global Policy. Her current research focuses on maritime security, historical rights and dispute settlement in the International Law of the Sea.

Empi Baryeh is a Ghanaian author of heartwarming, sensual African, multicultural and interracial romance and women’s fiction. Her published novels include: Most Eligible Bachelor (2012, 2020), Chancing Faith (2012), Forest Girl (2018), His Inherited Princess (2018) and Expecting Ty’s Baby (2019) and The Illegitimate Prince (2021).

Empi has won several awards for her novels, including Ufere Awards Book of the Year for Most Eligible Bachelor and Expecting Ty’s Baby, while Changing Faith won the Ayi Kwei Armah Novel 3rd Prize in the 2018 Ghana Association of Writers (GAW) Literary Awards.

She is a member of the Ghana Association of Writers, as well as Romance Writers of West Africa, an organisation that supports romance writers of West African origin and/or writers who write romantic fiction set in Africa.

Epifania Akosua Amoo-Adare is an enquiring soul who is interested in fully exploring life at the intersection of art, science, stillness, and conscious manifestation.

As an intellectual, she is concerned with the "politics of space" and the enabling of cognitive justice through an engagement with multiple non-western and/or non-academic ways of producing knowledge.

As the creative persona A. B. Godfreed, she writes poetry and narratives, as well as creates art and experimental beatmixes, which she shares online on "A.B. Godfreed Prosetry & Pic(k)s", Medium, Soundcloud and other digital platforms.

Epifania immerses herself in these eclectic endeavors, as her way of engaging in an "art of unthinking" and the creation of "work that makes life sweet", while also trying to highlight our diversity and yet epigenetically entangled oneness—in all its intelligence and beauty.

Frances Mensah Williams is a Ghanaian-born writer, entrepreneur, and Executive Coach, and the author of several fiction and non-fiction books. Her debut novel, the romantic comedy From Pasta to Pigfoot went straight in at no. 23 of WH Smith Travel’s Top 100 Summer Reads. It was followed by From Pasta to Pigfoot: Second Helpings, the novel Imperfect Arrangements and a novella series, the Marula Heights Romances, all set in Ghana.

Frances has also written two non-fiction books: Everyday Heroes - Learning from the Careers of Successful Black Professionals and ‘I Want to Work in Africa – How to Move Your Career to the World’s Most Exciting Continent’ and freelance articles for print and online publications including The Voice and Hello! Magazine. Alongside her writing, Frances is an entrepreneur, consultant, and Executive Coach with extensive corporate and commercial experience across a diverse range of industries.

As the founder of Interims for Development, she led international skills and business development projects in the UK and across Africa. She is also the founder and Managing Editor of ReConnect Africa, a global online careers and people management portal for professionals of Africa heritage. Frances was awarded the CBE by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 2020 for services to the African community in the UK and Africa. Frances’s latest novel, The Second Time We Met, was released in July 2022, going straight to #1 on the Amazon Kindle bestseller list for Black and African American Romance.

Fui Can-Tamakloe is a prose, poetry and film writer based in Ghana. In 2017, he co-authored Made in Ghana: A Collection of Short Stories.

His poetry, profiles, short stories, and articles have appeared both in print and online. He also works as an editor and ghostwriter.

He enjoys cold beers, great books, and slow traveling. He writes in English and Ghanaian Pidgin.

Edzordzi is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. He holds a Ph.D. in Rhetoric, Theory and Culture from the Michigan Technological University. He researches discourses of technology, and rhetorics of health and medicine, and teaches courses in scientific, medical, technical and professional writing.>/p>

His poetry has appeared in Prairie Schooner, North Dakota Quarterly, Dunes Review, Oakland Review, Drift, Kalahari Review, U.P. Reader, and anthologized in According to Sources, and Intercontinental Anthology of Poetry on Universal Peace. He recently co-edited Resilience: A Collection, published by the Writers Project of Ghana.

Gbontwi Anyetei is an activist screenwriter, novelist, essayist and entrepreneur.

He has written a number of pieces based on African history -most recently The Red Ants & The Noise will be his third book capturing the story of a genocide of the Gā people by the British in 1854.

He believes art can reframe our present and create a revolutionary future, daily obsesses about how to produce literature media productions that entertain timelessly WHILST espousing a Pan-Africanist ethic.

His flagship project is his biopic screenplay in development of his hero Kwame Nkrumah.

With his entrepreneur hat on Gbontwi established a business named 'Repatriate Arts' which is a talent agency connecting creatives from all over the world with the film, literary, arts, music worlds in Accra now and other African cities in future and an agribusiness (The Sabla Process) that exports value-added commodities from Ghana worldwide.

Grace Dorcas Annan is an author and publisher of “Oops! You Littered!” “21 Amazing Bible Affirmations”, “Thick, Tall, Trees” and "Hey, Let's Make a Change", and the organizer of ALL AFRiCAN BOOK FAIR, an annual fair to bridge up the large diversity margin in the children's book publishing field and to aid in the reading deficiency in Ghana

BUBARAYE DAKOLO is the author of two topical books entitled The Riddle Of The Oil Thief and Once A Soldier. He became a first-class traditional ruler in Bayelsa State, Nigeria in 2016 when the Ijaws of Ekpetiama Kingdom rose as one and anointed him as their paramount traditional head. His Royal Majesty Bubaraye Dakolo, Agada IV, Ibenanaowei of Ekpetiama Kingdom, as he is officially addressed, became Chairman, Bayelsa State Council of Traditional Rulers on March 16, 2022.

He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry, a Post-Graduate Diploma in Chemical Engineering, a Post-Graduate Diploma in Education, and a Master of Arts degree in Terrorism, International Crime, and Global Security. He is an alumnus of the Nigeria Defence Academy, NDA, Kaduna, and the University of Port Harcourt, both in Nigeria, as well as Coventry University, England. He is a Director of the New York-based International Center for Ethno-Religious Mediation, ICERM, and Chairman of its World Elders’ Forum. He is also a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Mediators and Conciliators of Nigeria, and an awardee of the Institute of Peace, United States of America. Prior to becoming Ibenanaowei, he served in the Nigerian army, taught at the University of Port Harcourt Demonstration Secondary School, UDSS, served in government offices as the pioneer Director of Ethics and Compliance in the Due Process and E-governance Bureau, and pioneer Technical Assistant to the first Executive Chairman of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC.

He is married to Her Royal Majesty, Queen Timinipre Bubaraye Dakolo, and they have two lovely children.

Henneh Kyereh Kwaku is a poet of Bono heritage and the author of Revolution of the Scavengers (African Poetry Book Fund / Akashic Books, 2020). A 2022 resident at the Library of Africa and the African Diaspora, and a recipient of the 2020 Samira Bawumia Literature Prize. He is originally from Gonasua in the Jaman South Municipality (Bono Region) of Ghana.

Ivor Agyeman-Duah is a development specialist who has written on economics, international development cooperation and literary histories. He served as an advisor to Ghana’s former President, John Agyekum Kufuor and the King of Ashanti, Osei Tutu II (on his historic visit to Seychelles) of which he produced two television documentaries - Yaa Asantewaa, the Heroism of An African Queen and The Return of a King to Seychelles. He was part of the BBC and PBS production team, Wonders of the African World presented by Henry Louis Gates, Jnr.

His published works include, Crucible of the Ages: Essays in Honour of Wole Soyinka at 80 and with Lucy Newlyn of Oxford, May Their Shadows Never Shrink- Wole Soyinka and the Oxford Professorship of Poetry.

He has also edited three well-received anthologies of contemporary fiction - All the Good Things Around Us, The Gods Who Send Us Gifts and Between the Generations.

Agyeman-Duah was a research scholar at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard (1998-1999) and at the Exeter College of Oxford (2006-2007). He studied at the London School of Economics, the School of Oriental and African Studies, London and the University of Wales.

The fifty-six stories come from fifteen African countries and elsewhere; Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Burkina Faso and East of the continent, Uganda, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo in the Great Lakes region, Ethiopia and Tanzania (in setting). They bring in other voices in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Botswana, Malawi, St. Maarten, United States and Britain. The themes are amok and definitely so in a vein of free expression. There are stories of love (of even a man who finds one whilst visiting a dying cancer-patient wife at the hospital in Lagos) or of a husband wrongfully imprisoned in Malawi who upon escape from jail confronts a wife about to wed again, a story very reminiscent of the main character in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s, Weep Not, Child.

There is hate and there is poverty - one from Kenya which reads like the Zimbabwean novelist, Dambudzo Marechera’s 1978 classic, The House of Hunger. Issues of mental health, corpse donation for scientific research and Coronavirus-19 are addressed alongside Pentecostal redemption, fake prophets and the havoc they exert on societies as do their counterparts in Islam.

Jackie Morrison, aka Mama Adjua, is a Registered General Nurse and an Independent Health Visitor. She has over 30 years’ experience working in the National Health Service (NHS), in areas such as Safeguarding, Child Development, Postnatal Depression, Pregnancy Loss, Sleep Consultancy, NHS Management & supporting vulnerable families.

James Courtright is a Dakar-based research fellow with the Institute of Current World Affairs where he is learning and writing about Fulani societies across West Africa. He grew up between Malawi, the United States and Tanzania. He studied African history at Denison University and served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Kolda, Senegal for three years. He then moved to Dakar and wrote about human rights, the environment and migration for NPR, The Christian Science Monitor and Roads & Kingdoms, among other publications. After completing a graduate degree at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs he returned to West Africa to work with Gambian civil society alongside the country’s truth commission. He began his fellowship with ICWA in October 2021 and is currently based in Dakar, with regular travel around West Africa.

Jeff Atuobi is a fiction writer, researcher and critic. An alumnus of the Caine Prize Workshop for African Writing, Mo Issa Writers Workshop and Ebedi Writers Residency and Fellowship, he writes fiction under the pseudonym Andrew Aidoo. Currently, he participates in the Art Writing and Criticism Workshop organised by Goethe-Institut Nigeria and SBMEN.

Joewackle J. Kusi is an eccentric writer, filmmaker, and audio content creator. His works straddle gender, sexuality, lifestyle and culture, cantering uncomfortable yet relevant social conversations. Joewackle has written several articles that can be found both online and in print. His debut feature film, LUCKY was described by critics as an instant cult classic with a number of festival laurels and award considerations. Followed that up with BOYS NO DEY CRY, a short film that explores the complexities of toxic masculinity, mental health, religion, and family in African homes. He has also worked on short films, web- series and TV shows both as a writer and in different capacities on various productions.

Joshua Weber has always had a love for literature, so it wasn’t a surprise to his family when he quit his day job in 2017 and became an intern with the hybrid publisher Calumet Editions.

In the past several years, he has held many roles at Calumet: developing marketing campaigns, proofreading manuscripts, communicating with authors, and now holds the role as the Operations Manager at Calumet’s headquarters in Edina, Minnesota.

Josh thrives on finding creative solutions to seemingly impossible problems while trying to realize an author’s wish of having the best possible version of their book published.

Katleho Kano Shoro is a South African-born artist-scholar. She is the author of the poetry collection, Serurubele, and a PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. Her work in the arts extends to performance, research, editing, workshop facilitation, project management and lecturing. Amongst other collaborative editorial projects, most recently, Katleho co-edited the 2021 collection of poetry reviews The Constant Reader: Poetry Reviews by Poets in South Africa.

Kofi Dotse is a multifaceted social media marketer and content creator with experience in social and creative strategy and photo and video production. He blends a passion for travel, culture and lifestyle. Based in Accra, Kofi Dotse provides strategic, creative direction for brands in the social space. On the side, he's a travel and lifestyle creator and influencer.

Aside from his social media marketing job, Kofi is a Travel and Culture contributor for several magazine and print publications like Fodors Travel USA and The Black Explorer Magazine UK. Kofi is currently a content creator at Global Citizen, an international education and advocacy organisation working to catalyse the movement to end extreme poverty.

Kofi Otutu Adu Labi is a lawyer, management consultant and author. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Ghana Association of Writers (GAW). He has written ten books and is a recipient of the GAW Achievement Award, 2019. In 2011, he served as a panellist at the first Financial Infrastructure Conference and the Fourth UN Conference on the Least Developed Countries held in Brazil and Turkey respectively.

He was educated at Ofori Panin, Achimota School, University of Ghana and the University of Bradford School of Management. He is an alumnus of the Haggai Institute for Advanced Leadership, Hawaii. He served as Advisor under two Governors of the Bank of Ghana. He has held a number of directorships including, Securities and Exchange Commission Ghana, the National Pensions Regulatory Authority, Victory Presbyterian Church School and the Bible Society of Ghana. He is a Member of Council of the Christian Service University College, Kumasi.

Kwaku-Sakyi-Addo is a communications consultant, telecoms policy advocate and journalist based in Accra, Ghana. He was a full-time broadcaster and journalist for 26 years, winning many awards, including Journalist of the Year on two occasions. He was a freelance correspondent for Reuters from 1998 to 2007 and the BBC World Service from 1993-2007, making him a household name among radio listeners in Africa. He received the Order of the Volta, one of Ghana’s highest decorations, from the government of Ghana in 2007.

He was executive producer and host of Kwaku One-on-One, a face-to-face personality interview programme, which ran between 1998 and 2010 on both private and state television. He also hosted Front Page, a weekly current affairs programme on Joy FM for 16 years. Kwaku has conducted interviews with various world leaders including the last three UN Secretary-Generals.

Kwaku made a foray into the telecom industry in 2011 as Chief Executive of the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications, and resigned in early April 2017 to accept an appointment as Chairman of the National Communications Authority (NCA), the telecom industry regulator. Kwaku is a Chevening Scholar, a Fellow of the Aspen Institute’s Global Leadership Network, and a Director of the Africa Leadership Initiative West Africa.

Kwaku loves the arts. He believes the world should be run by writers.

Kwaw Paintsil Ansah is a film director, screenwriter, producer and playwright regarded in many circles as Ghana’s most influential filmmaker.

He has been a storyteller throughout his adult life by way of his work in advertising, plays, films and design. Very few people know that he designed some of Ghana’s popular wax print cloths such as Abban Nkaba and You Too Can Fly.

Born in 1941 to a photographer, dramatist and musician father and an entrepreneur mother, Ansah’s breakthrough as a film director came in 1980 with Love Brewed In The African Pot. Until that film came along, it was only the Ghana Film Industry Corporation (GFIC) that made feature films in Ghana and they were all funded by the government. Nobody had any track record of having produced a feature with privately-raised funds. Ansah has said on several occasions that it took about eight months to complete the script and eight years to source funding for the film. The success of Love Brewed on both the local and international film circuits strengthened his belief that calculated risks were worth taking. Another worthy lesson Love Brewed taught Ansah was the need for Africa’s creative legion to constantly draw on local culture and experience. He is always proud to draw on Ghanaian aesthetic milieu to construct narratives that resonate with people everywhere.

As an acclaimed filmmaker, Ansah’s other works include Heritage Africa; Crossroads Of People, Crossroads of Trade; The Good Old Days; Suffering To Lose; The Love Of AA and Papa Lasisi Bicycle. Though a staunch Pan-Africanist, Ansah believes that Africans telling stories to the world must not develop emotional attachments to what they consider as their relevant values and just proclaim them without regard to requisite artistic merits.

He sees relevant training as important for success and that’s why despite the early surge of artistic talent in his life, he strived to study theatre design, music and filmmaking at institutions such as the London Polytechnic in the United Kingdom and the America Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York.

He also won a grant which enabled him understudy film production at the famous RKO Studios in Hollywood. Respect and admiration for his general body of work have come in the form of several awards in Ghana, Burkina Faso, United Kingdom, India and other places. He has served on the board of several organizations and has also been a film training consultant to UNESCO. Ansah is also the founder of the Bisa Abrewa Museum in Sekondi in the Western Region which further underscores his belief that Africans must communicate their values and beliefs at all times.

Kwesi Nyantakyi is currently a partner in the law firm of Annan, Nyantakyi & Company in Accra. He has also worked with HFC Bank and First Atlantic Bank for a combined period of over 16 years.

From 2005 to 2018 he served as president of the Ghana Football Association and was also president of the West African Football Union, Council Member of FIFA and Vice President of the Confederation of African Football.

At club level, he was president of Wa Allstars FC, and Vice Chairman of Upper west heroes FC.

Ko-Jo Cue is a Ghanaian rapper and songwriter with an uncanny knack for storytelling following the tradition of the old griots of West Africa.

Born Linford Kennedy Amankwaa, he describes himself as an African man telling African stories with an neo-African voice.

His lyrical style is Introspective and socially conscious yet non-judgmental.

He tells everyday stories from the viewpoint of a philosopher in search of answers. His music is a blend of Hip-Hop, Highlife and Afrobeats.

His 2017 joint album Pen & Paper with label mate Shaker was lauded for its brazen lyricism and creative music videos.

Ms. Lauryn Hill and earned him an opening spot on her 20th Anniversary Miseducation Tour.

On November 5th 2019, He released his debut album 'For My Brothers' to critical acclaim and fan appreciation.

Notable past performances include Afrochella 2017, GidiFest 2019, Ghana Meets Naija 2018, Ghana Music Awards Launch Party 2018 and 20th Miseducation Tour 2018.

He is also a former KFC Ghana brand ambassador and has done admirable social work with OxFam International, Drama Queens Ghana and Young Einsteins Ghana.

Maame Aba Daisie is a Ghanaian fiction enthusiast and editor with a deep love for fantasy.

Her role at flipped eye publishing, in addition to editing, oversees communications and production.

Maame Aba Daisie is a Ghanaian fiction enthusiast and editor with a deep love for fantasy.

Her role at flipped eye publishing, in addition to editing, oversees communications and production.

Maame Blue is a Ghanaian-Londoner, recipient of the 2022 Society of Authors Travelling Scholarship and author of the novel Bad Love, which won the 2021 Betty Trask Award. Her short stories have appeared in Not Quite Right For Us and KYD New Australian Fiction 2020. Her writing will also appear in the upcoming children’s anthology Joyful, Joyful and she is currently working on her next novel.

Mamle Wolo is a Ghanaian/German writer, born in Ghana. She is the author of The Kaya Girl, published by Little, Brown in June 2022. Her next children’s novel, Flying through Water, will be published by Little, Brown in 2023. Mamle holds an MA in Modern Languages from the University of Cambridge, and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Lancaster, UK. She is an honorary fellow in writing of the International Writing Program (IWP) at the University of Iowa. Mamle lives in Accra, Ghana, and is a director of the Writers Project of Ghana (WPG).

Martin Egblewogbe is a senior lecturer in Physics at the Department of Physics, University of Ghana. He is the author of the collection of short stories, The Waiting (lubin & kleyner, 2020) and Mr Happy and The Hammer of God and other Stories (Ayebia, 2012). His writing has appeared in a number of collections, such as The Gonjon Pin (2014 Caine Prize anthology), PEN America’s Passages Africa (2015), All The Good Things Around Us (2016), Litro #162: Literary Highlife (2017), Between The Generations (2020), Shimmering at Sunset (2021) and Voices That Sing Behind The Veil (2022). Martin was the commissioning editor for the anthology Resilience: A Collection (2021), and also co-edited the anthology of short stories, The Sea Has Drowned the Fish (2018) as well as the anthologies of poetry Look where you have gone to sit (Woeli, 2010) and According to Sources (Woeli, 2015). He is a co-founder and a director of the Writers Project of Ghana, and director of Pa Gya! A Literary Festival in Accra in the 2017 - 2022 editions. He also hosts the radio show, Writers Project on Citi FM.

Michelle Alipao Chikaonda (she/her/hers) is a nonfiction writer from Blantyre, Malawi, she was a resident of the USA from 2002-2022, most recently in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is currently a graduate student at the University of East Anglia in the UK, studying biography and creative nonfiction at UEA's School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing. In addition to being a 2019 resident at The Seventh Wave’s Rhinebeck Residency, she is a Voices of Our Nations [VONA] Workshop fellow, a Tin House Summer Workshop alumna, and has presented at several Association of Writing and Writing Programs [AWP] conferences. A contributing editor for nonfiction at Electric Literature, Michelle is also currently published at Al Jazeera, The Globe and Mail, Catapult, the Broad Street Review, Business Insider, and Africa is A Country, among others.

Mohammed Ahmed Polo burst onto the football scene of Ghana in the early 1970s and quickly endeared himself to the fans with his amazing skills including magnificent dribbling antics, accurate passing, expert conversion of spot kicks, abundant stamina and everything that one loves about the game. He joined the junior side of Hearts of Oak in 1973 but within a year was promoted to the senior side. So significant was his contribution to Hearts of Oak that he was drafted into the Black Stars when he was still a teenager. Indeed Ahmed Polo won the hearts of all and sundry and became the first and perhaps youngest to win the “Footballer of the Year” award by the Sports Writers Association of Ghana in 1974.

He also became the fulcrum of the “Fearsome Five” players of Hearts of Oak alongside compatriots “Bomber” Mama Acquah, “Thunder” Anas Seidu, “Expensive” Robert Hammond and “Goal Thief” Peter Lamptey. During his time with these colleagues, they swept almost every trophy that was being competed for in Ghana football. But for injuries that hit him as early as his fourth year of playing football at the highest level, Ahmed Polo would have assisted Hearts to win their first continental trophy in 1977. He was very instrumental in helping the team to eliminate the dreaded Al Ahly of Egypt at the quarter-final stage and Uganda’s Mufuliara Wanderers at the semi-final stages in what has become known as the “Miracle of El Wak”. Ahmed Polo, in spite of the injury, was patriotic enough to play a vital role in the Black Stars annexation of the Africa cup for the third time in 1978 and ended up being named among Africa’s best eleven after the tournament.

Polo has embellished the football landscape of Ghana with so much panache and poise that sport writers showered accolades on him like confetti. The three of them that thrill me are “The Dribbling Magician, The Soccer Superamus and the Soccer Professor”. He had a way of playing to the strength of his colleagues that helped to unearth their potentials and also mentored many during his over 20 years of play including Abedi Ayew “Pele”. He played professional football with Al Wasl of the UAE for about four years in the late 1970s as well as with Shell Gabon FC at the twilight of his career.

Polo was once named Africa’s fourth best footballer and has carved his name in letters of gold as far as Ghana football is concerned. He spices up the game of football with something extra that he alone could manufacture and to-date, is considered as Ghana’s best-ever.

Molara Wood is a writer, journalist, critic, editor and speechwriter. She won the inaugural John La Rose Memorial Short Story Competition and received a Commonwealth Broadcasting Association award for her fiction.

She is widely published internationally and has served on the judging panels of several awards including: the Zuma International Film Festival, the Etisalat Prize for Literature, and the Quramo Writers Prize.

Described as ‘one of the eminent voices in the Arts in Nigeria,’ and with credits across film, literature and visual art, she served as Arts and Culture Editor of NEXT Newspaper, and was for many years an Arts columnist for The Guardian. She continues to write on books and the arts for publications including the BBC and The Irish Times.

Molara Wood is one of 10 Nigerian women writers featured in a Google Arts and Culture exhibit on the city of Lagos, and was selected for the LOATAD West African Writers Residency 2022. She also hosts the ART for the People Podcast.

She is the author of INDIGO, a collection of short stories with a strong focus on the condition of women in society.

Ms. Anna Naa Amanua Ankrah is a language enthusiast with a flair for writing and editing. She is an author and the winner of the maiden edition of the Ghanaian Languages short story prize (Ga category). Ms. Ankrah has edited several books and write-ups and is keen on using her stories and poems to project the culture, language and customs of the Ga people. She holds a degree in English and Linguistics from the University of Ghana.

Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah is the author of The Sex Lives of African Women, which Publishers Weekly described as “an astonishing report on the quest for sexual liberation” in their starred review. It was also listed by The Economist as a best book of the year. She is also co-founder of Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women, a website, podcast and festival that publishes and creates content that tells stories of African women’s experiences around sex, sexualities, and pleasure.

Nana is also a communications strategist who has over fifteen years experience of developing and delivering strategic communications programmes across media, public sector and non-governmental organisations. She has a deep understanding of digital technologies for feminist activism, and is widely recognised as a key African feminist working at the intersections of gender, sexualities and technologies. The impact of Nana Darkoa’s work has been documented by CNN in a film titled, Not Yet Satisfied.

She holds a BSc (Hons) in Communications and Cultural Studies from the University of North London (now London Metropolitan University), and a MSc in Gender and Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is also a trained performance coach, and leadership trainer. Nana lives in Accra, Ghana with her daughter Asantewaa, and her dog Romeo.

Nancy Henaku is Chair of the editorial board for the Journal of the Writers Project of Ghana (JWPG). She is currently a lecturer at the Department of English, University of Ghana, Legon.

Nasiba Mbabe Bawa is a Ghanaian book reviewer and bookstagrammer.

Nii Ayertey Aryeh is a Gã language activist exploring new ideas that can expand the language to be ahead of modern trends. A hybrid GãDaŋme with roots in Abola - Gãmashie and Kletsokunya - Prampram. He works with AccraDotAlt to produce Chale Wote Street Art Festival, and Sabolai Radio Music Festival.

Nii Odai Laryea is a product of St. Theresa’s Preparatory School, Kaneshie, Prempeh College in Kumasi and Tarkwa Secondary School. He took his first degree in Sociology/Geography at the University of Ghana, Legon and a masters’ degree in Regional Planning at the then University of Science and Technology, Kumasi.

Aside teaching at Mfantsipim School in Cape Coast for his National Service in 1980-81, he has also had short stints at St. Augustine’s College, Mpraeso Senior and Teshie Presbyterian Senior Secondary Schools. He worked as a Research Officer at the then Water Resources Research Institute of CSIR for about 5 years before venturing into consultancy into WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) issues. The consultancy work has sent him to work on a number of rural water and sanitation projects country-wide with the UNDP, IGIP a German Consultancy firm and since the year 2000, he has been working with MAPLE Consult on a number of projects. His work entails proposal writing, workshop facilitation, socio-economic research, writing and presentation of academic papers etc. These are primarily within the areas of decentralization and local government, development planning and public sector management as well as institutional capacity development and training.

He loves football, boxing and writing. Nii Odai is married and been blessed with three children.

Noble Kofi Nazzah is the Director of Programs for the New York-based United Solutions Consultancy Group and he was an Associate Producer (Africa) for the Talking Black— Roots in America documentary.

Noble is a graduate of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

Nyaneba or Nyani (pen name) Nkrumah was born in Boston and grew up in Ghana, West Africa. At the age of 15 she moved to post-independent Zimbabwe, and later, to the US. Her love of writing comes from her mother, a former English and literature teacher who entertained her kids by reciting poetry and Shakespeare soliloquies on the way to school. Her first short story, published by Herma publications in Ghana "The Right Kind of Holiday" won the Valco Literary Prize, spurring her to continue her writing endeavors outside of her work. Her first adult novel, Wade in the Water, coming out in January '23, is being published by Amistad HarperCollins. Amistad is focused on publishing black books that educate, entertain and empower.

Nyani graduated from Amherst College in the US where she dual majored in Biology and Black Studies. She also has a Masters from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and a Ph.D in Natural Resources from Cornell University. She is also a Fulbright Scholar. Nyani Nkrumah has worked with the World Bank in Washington DC for the last 20+ years, as a task leader for various projects related to environment and climate change. She is married and has a 19 year old daughter and a 17 year old son.

Obari Gomba (PhD), an Honorary Fellow in Writing of the University of Iowa (USA) and the Associate Dean of Humanities at the University of Port Harcourt, has been the TORCH Global South Visiting Professor and Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, University of Oxford (UK). He is a recipient of Rivers ANA Distinguished Writer Award, Kangaroo Poetry Festival Poet of 2018, and a two-time winner of both the Best Literary Artiste Award and the First Prize for Drama of the English Association of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

His works include The Lilt of the Rebel (Winner of PAWA Prize for African Poetry 2022), Guerrilla Post (Winner of ANA Drama Prize 2018/Listed for the Nigeria Prize for Literature 2018), For Every Homeland (Winner of ANA Poetry Prize 2017/Listed for the Nigeria Prize for Literature 2017), Thunder Protocol (Winner of ANA Poetry Prize 2016), Length of Eyes (Shortlisted for ANA Poetry Prize in 2013 /Listed for the Nigeria Prize for Literature 2013), and Pearls of the Mangrove (adopted as a ‘Book of the Festival’ for the 2011 Garden City Literary Festival and the 2019 Festival Poetry Calabar).

He curated an anthology featuring 35 writers from 33 countries, entitled A Piece of Daily Life, for the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa (USA) in 2016.

His poetry has been featured in Re-Markings: A World Assembly of Poets and The Second Genesis: An Anthology of Contemporary World Poetry. His poetry has been published in international journals such as Prosopisia, Sentinel, Maple Tree Literary Supplement and Eleven Eleven (which listed his ‘Gun Policy’ in the 20 Best of the Net for 2016). He has read his poems in the United States at Shambaugh House (University of Iowa), Dubuque Museum of Arts, Oaknell Retirement Centre, and Kirkwood.

Patron Henekou is a poet and cofounder of Festival International des Lettres et des Arts (www.nimblefeathers.com) at Université de Lomé, Togo. He writes in French and English as well, and translates, and teaches literature and creative writing. His poems have appeared in anthologies such as Palmes pour le Togo, Arbolarium, Antologia Poetica de Los Cinco Continentes, and The Best New African Poets Anthology 2017, and in poetry journals such as AFROpoésie, Revue des Citoyens des Lettres, Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, Asymptote, Better than Starbucks, Zócalo, etc. His published books include Dovlo (2015), Souffles d’outre-cœur (2017), Souffles, Faces (2018), Des cheveux et des ongles (2021) and Vendredi soir sur la 13 (2021).

Patron obtained the second prize in the Prix International de Poésie « Sur les traces de Léopold Sédar Senghor 2020 » in Milan, Italy. He is a 2018 African American Fellow at the Palm Beach Poetry Festival in Delray, Florida.

Image credit Christian André Strand

Philippe Sands QC is Professor of Law at University College London and Samuel and Judith Pisar Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He is a practising barrister and appears as counsel before the International Court of Justice and other international courts and tribunals. He sits as an arbitrator in international investment disputes and the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

He is author of Lawless World (2005) and Torture Team (2008) and numerous academic books on international law, and has contributed to the New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, the Financial Times, The Guardian and the New York Times. His most recent books are East West Street: On the Origins of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide (2016) (awarded the 2016 Baillie Gifford Prize, the 2017 British Book Awards Non-Fiction Book of the Year, and the 2018 Prix Montaigne) and The Ratline: Love, Lies and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive (2020), also available as BBC and France Culture podcasts. His latest book is The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain's Colonial Legacy (2022). Philippe is President of English PEN and a member of the Board of the Hay Festival of Arts and Literature.

Priscilla Adipa was born and raised in Accra. Her short stories, which explore grief, identity, desire, and family dynamics, have appeared in Transition, Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, Brittle Paper, Afritondo, African Writer Magazine, and Resilience, an anthology published by Writers Project of Ghana. A sociologist, Priscilla is fascinated by how we're shaped by people, places and things. She is currently working on her first novel.

Professor Ato Quayson is the Jean G. and Morris M. Doyle Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Stanford University. He did his BA (First Class Honors, English and Arabic) at the University of Ghana, then went to the University of Cambridge to take his PhD after which he proceeded to the University of Oxford for a JRF (post-doc) then back to Cambridge as Assistant Lecturer in the Faculty of English and Fellow of Pembroke College in 1995. He got tenure 3 years later (the first Black person to achieve this in the history of Cambridge) then rose to become Reader in Commonwealth and Postcolonial Literature. He was also the Director of the Centre of African Studies at Cambridge, a post he held from 1997-2005.

In 2005, Professor Quayson was recruited to the University of Toronto to be the founding Director of the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies and Professor of English. In 2016 he was appointed University Professor at the University of Toronto, a distinction that is reserved for not more than 2% of the Professoriate. He moved to the Department of English at New York University in 2017 and then to Stanford University in 2019.

Professor Quayson has written 6 single-authored monographs and edited 8 essay collections. His monographs include Strategic Transformations in Nigerian Writing (Indiana University Press, 1997; from his PhD dissertation), Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability and the Crisis of Representation (2007), and Oxford Street, Accra (Duke University Press, 2014; co-winner of the Best Book Prize of the Urban History Association (non-North America) and also named by The Guardian newspaper as one of the best 10 books on cities in 2014). His most recent monograph is Tragedy and Postcolonial Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2021).

Professor Quayson is an elected Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Society of Canada, and of the British Academy.

Dr. Patricia Jabbeh Wesley immigrated to the United States with her family during the 14-year Liberian civil war, a war that has helped shape her writing as a Diaspora African woman writer in the United States. For more than two decades, Wesley’s poetry has given voice to the voiceless, the hundreds of thousands of Liberian war dead through its exploration of themes on the plight of the refugee of war, the new African Diaspora mother/wife and African femininity, motherhood, home, displacement, and the survivor as witness. African scholar and literary critic, Chielozona Eze describes Wesley as “one of the most prolific African poets of the twenty-first century,” and Kwame Dawes, poet and founder of the African Poetry Book Series describes her as “a poet at the height of her skills and at the height of her clarity about the world and what things must be spoken into it.” She is the author of six books of poetry: Praise Song for My Children: New and Selected Poems, When the Wanderers Come Home, Where the Road Turns, The River is Rising, Becoming Ebony, and Before the Palm Could Bloom: Poems of Africa. She is also the author of a children’s book, In Monrovia, the River Visits the Sea. Her newest publication, Breaking the Silence: Anthology of Liberian Poetry, the most comprehensive volume of Liberian literature of any genre, is forthcoming in March of 2023 from University of Nebraska Press. Her poem, “One Day: Love Song for Divorced Women” was selected by US Poet Laureate, Ted Kooser as an American Life in Poetry June 13, 2011, featured poem. Most recently, that same poem was selected by Naomi Shihab Nye as the New York Times Magazine featured poem on June 7, 2020.

Dr. Wesley has also had dozens of individual poems and memoir articles, and short stories anthologized and published in literary magazines, including Harvard Review, Transition, Crab Orchard Review, Harvard Divinity Review, Prairie Schooner, among others, and her work has been translated in Spanish, Italian, Finnish, and Hebrew. As a literary scholar and professor, Wesley has conducted research on Liberian women’s war stories, has served as an elected Executive Committee Member and Chair of the African Literature Division of the Modern Language Association (MLA 2003- 2008), and has presented numerous papers on her own poetics, African literature, African poetry, and poetry as a genre at several international conferences and literary festivals in the US and around the world. In 2008, she was commissioned by Advocates of Human Rights as an Expert Witness in the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Hearings in Minneapolis, MN, on the Liberian civil war, where she presented both her war time experiences as a witness/victim of the war alongside her research, documenting and recording Liberian women’s traumatic stories from the war.

Wesley’s six book of poems, Praise Song for My Children: New and Selected Poems was selected by judges as the 2023 winner of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Award. Her second book, Becoming Ebony was winner of the 2002 Crab Orchard Award, and published by Southern Illinois University Press in 2003. She has received many other awards and grants,including a 2020 Humanities Institute (HI) Fellowship from Penn State University and a 2011 Institute of Arts (IAH) Fellowship from Penn State, a 2016 WISE Women Literary Arts Award from Wise Women of Blair County, Pennsylvania, a 2011 President Barack Obama Award from Blair County NAACP in Altoona, PA, the 2010 Liberian Award for her poetry and her mentorship of young Liberians in the Diaspora, a Penn State University AESEDA Collaborative Grant for her research on Liberian Women's Trauma stories from the Civil War, a World Bank Fellowship, among others. Her poems have been nominated four times for the Pushcart Awards, Best of the Net, among others. Dr. Wesley’s poetry has been extensively reviewed in magazines and has been the subject of book chapters by literary scholars and critics of literature, the subject of theses by graduate students across Africa and the world, including recent reviews in the UK, in the US, Scotland, and in Canada, and in Africa. Reviewers have explored her work’s contribution to gender issues, Africans in the Diaspora, exile, women in war, the Grebo tradition, and Liberia for more than two decades now.

Reggie Rockstone (Reginald Yaw Asante Ossei, "the Godfather of Hiplife") is a Ghanaian rapper.

He was born in the United Kingdom but lived his early years in Kumasi and Accra. He has been living in Ghana continuously since he pioneered the Hip-Life movement in 1994..

He pioneered the Hiplife art and has played an important role in the development of this uniquely African genre in Ghana. He raps in Akan, precisely Asante Twi, and English.

In 2004, Rockstone won the Kora Award for the best African video and he performed in front of a 50,000-person crowd in Ghana, together with Shaggy.

In 2006, he recorded a track with the Jamaican Dancehall singer Beenie Man called "Chukku Chakka" (in reference to Rockstone's 1999 hit "Eye Mo De Anaa", which sampled Fela Kuti).

Rhoda Korley-Owu is a lover of literature who channels her creativity through writing articles and crafting book reviews. She is a contributing writer on culture publication AKADi Magazine and hosts the magazine's Instagram Live series The Bookplate. The Bookplate is a space for Ghanaian writers/ poets and illustrators to showcase their creativity, discuss their work and hopefully inspire another generation of budding writers.

Rita Esieduah Intsiful has a background in development and volunteerism with expertise in education management, public policy, health management, event management and research spanning over 10 years. Significantly at the intersection of her work are education, health and development. She has especially focused on rural development practices as well as women and children. She has also worked with a number of international organisations in developing and sustainably maintaining projects on education and health.

Ruby Yayra Goka is a multiple winner of the CODE Burt Award for African Young Adult Literature which recognizes excellence in African writing. Her books have also won prizes in the Ghana Association of Writers’s Awards, the Professor Kofi Awoonor Literary Prize and honorary mentions at the Children's Africana Book Awards (CABA) and the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY). Ruby is committed to ensuring African children learn to develop the habit of reading for pleasure and to ensuring that books African children read reflect their experiences and environments; books that feature characters who are “just like them”.

Ryan Van Winkle is an author, artist and producer based in Edinburgh. His second collection, The Good Dark, won the Saltire Society’s 2015 Poetry Book of the Year award. He is currently Writer in Residence at the University of Edinburgh and the Schools Writer in Residence for the Citizen project at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Modern Poetry in Translation and New Writing Scotland. He was awarded the Jessie Kesson fellowship at Moniack Mhor in 2018.

He is also the Creative Director of Golden Hour Productions which has been producing innovative live literature experiences since 2006. As a producer at Highlight Arts he has organised festivals and translation workshops in Syria, Pakistan and Iraq.

Samuel is a partner and disputes lawyer with AudreyGrey Unlimited. He holds a Qualifying Certificate in Law from the Ghana School of Law, a Bachelor of Laws degree (LLB) from the University of Ghana, and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and French also from the University of Ghana.

Samuel’s experience includes advising on matters concerning employment and benefits law, company law and corporate governance, restructuring and business rescue, intellectual property, criminal law, corruption and anti-money laundering compliance issues. He has wide experience working with local and international entities. He has also advised clients in the maritime and shipping industry, financial institutions, pharmaceutical and general manufacturing.

Samuel has experience working with legislation in parts of the African continent including Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Tanzania, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Ghana. He is an editor of the Ghana Law Hub (www.ghanalawhub.com), the Ghana Law Journal, and the Criminal Law Reports of Ghana. He previously served as a deputy editor of the first edition of the Commercial Law Reports of Ghana.

Selikem Gotah is a PhD candidate in the Department of Linguistics at New York University. He is interested in investigating phenomena in the structure and formation of sentences in dialects of Ewe.

Stephen Dziedzorm Dadugblor is Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia. He earned a PhD in English (concentration in Rhetoric) from The University of Texas at Austin. His research and teaching specialties are in cultural rhetorics and public deliberations about democracy. An avid reader of Ewe stories, Stephen is committed to the belief that there is immense value in using African languages to promote African epistemologies.

Dr Teddy Totimeh is a neurosurgeon based in Accra, Ghana. He works with the University of Ghana Medical Centre.

His research interests include Metabolic response to trauma, neuro infection and traumatic brain injury. He loves literature, music and the chronicling of human experience, blogging on multiple platforms. He is a 2016 EIsenhower fellow and an advocate for critical care management and specialized surgical training in resource-limited environments.

He is married to Maamle and they have 3 kids.

Theresah Addai-Mununkum is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of English, College of Humanities and Legal Studies at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana, where she teaches and engages in research. Her teaching and research areas are: African literature, Literary theory, Masculinities, Gender and Writing, Queer theory, Gender Identity and Sexuality Studies, and Literary and artistic constructions of gender and sex. She is also the Coordinator for Advocacy and Outreach at the Centre for Gender Research, Advocacy and Documentation (CEGRAD) at the University of Cape Coast.

Apart from the University of Cape Coast, she has worked as a student Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and also as the Language Coordinator and Administrator (Ghana, Cape Coast Site) for the School for International Training, Vermont. She obtained her PhD in African Languages and Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2013 in the USA where she was a Fulbright Scholar. She had her Master of Philosophy degree in English from the University of Cape Coast in 2001. Currently, she is a member of the African Literature Association and the African Studies Association. Her academic awards include a 2018 ASA Presidential Fellows Award and a 2014 ACLS/African Humanities Program Fellowship. She has been a guest speaker at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa, UNISA and Iowa State University in the USA, and published in Journals such as the West Africa Review, Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men, and the African Studies Quarterly.

Vamba Sherif is a novelist, essayist, film critic and speaker. His debut novel, Land of My Fathers, is about the founding of Liberia as the first African republic in 1822. Vamba Sherif’s work has appeared in many languages, including Dutch, English, French, German, Spanish, and the Indian Malayalam. He has also published essays, stories, film reviews, columns and opinion pieces in The New York Times, the German Kulturaustausch, African Writing, Trouw, Volkskrant, NRC and ZAM-Magazine, among others. With Ebissé Rouw, he compiled Black: Afro-European literature in the Netherlands and Belgium, a unique anthology of Afro-European experience in the Low Countries. In April 2021, his memoir Unprecedented Love was published, in which he tells his life story in a letter form to his ten-year-old daughter Bendu, the namesake of his mother.

Yewande Omotoso trained as an architect. Her debut novel Bom Boy was shortlisted for the 2012 Sunday Times Fiction Prize in South Africa. Yewande was shortlisted for the 2013 Etisalat Prize for Literature. Her second novel, Woman Next Door, was longlisted for the 2017 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. In 2018, it was shortlisted for the International DUBLIN Literary Award and a finalist in the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Fiction. It has been translated into Catalan, Dutch, French, German. Italian and Korean. She currently lives in Johannesburg.

A drummer, guitarist and bassist, Mallet is recognized as one of the pioneers of the Hiplife genre which started in 1994. He was the music director and guitarist of the Burger-Highlife tours and a resident judge one of Ghana's music reality shows – “Stars of the Future”.

Known widely as a recording engineer / producer, he was also a guest judge on Mentor, the most watched music reality show in Ghana. He represented Ghana as a judge at the final of the Nescafé African Revelation contest, which was staged in Accra.

Zapp is a member of the planning and selection committee of the Ghana Music Awards and an editorial board member of Pinnacle Magazine. He has been a facilitator on the British Council organized Art showcase and interruptive platform dubbed WAPI.

Over the years, he has been recognized and awarded on several platforms. Undeniably, he is the only engineer to have won the Ghana Music Award for three consecutive years - 1999, 2000 and 2001 as well as winning Producer of the Year in 2011. In 1994 the Entertainment Critics and Arts Society of Ghana adjudged him the Best Instrumentalist.

Mallet started recording at the ARC Studios in Tema before moving to the C.H.M Studio in Accra before moving on to Kampsite and later T.L.C. Studio. Currently, he is the head executive director of Title Track Productions.

Zenith Akwei holds a bachelor’s degree in Management Studies from the University of Cape Coast. He teaches English Literature at Bishop John Daly School, Accra.