In a universe where African voices are frequently suppressed when it comes to telling their stories, there is the perpetual question of what African storytelling should be about. Some believe that portraying the armed conflicts, starving children, and pain becomes an overwhelming, generic vessel for trauma. For others, sweeping our suffering under the rug makes for a dollified painting of our experience, far from our shared truths which pain is an integral part of. Labels are forced upon us: of oversimplification, fetishisation, distortion for the sake of the Western gaze. Yet, Lolwe stands as a home for a tapestry of all the stories, known, new, everything in between, that make Africa. 

In the short stories in this issue, the imagination of the authors, the diversity of genres, styles, and prose at play is liberating. In Shammah Godoz’s ‘The First Progenitor’ magic is the preserve of the privileged, without which people are stricken with famine and fragility. A man among the masses must travel to the source of that power, physically and spiritually, to save his kin. ‘Where is Chukwuokike?’ by Lynda Chidera Anih, weaves together an origin myth of divine worship and mortal hubris rooted in Igbo cosmology. The voice here brims with mischief, and the burning satisfaction of revealing the story under a story, which pleasingly delineates the many ripples that a simple question can induce. Almost in conversation with the aforementioned stories, ‘Née’ by Lindiwe Dhlakama interrogates labels, names that we shape ourselves into and brandish like a shield – or like a yoke – when adversity lands. Beyond a name, Dhlakama presents African migrants being enslaved in the Middle East with faces, and sorrows, against a background of extraterritorial state violence. ‘Mango Season’ by Piloya Innocent leads us along the vertiginous line between the sweet ignorance of childhood and life’s inescapable brutality. The warm depiction of a child’s yearning for mangoes becomes a window for armed conflict and how it affects those living in the margins. Set in near-futuristic Kenya, ‘The Split’ by Akinyi Ocholla is a reflective portrayal of resilience and community sought after as climate disaster and displacement hits. In this story, there is a peculiar desperation in the way some characters cling to what makes them human, while others embrace the fabricated comfort of artificial intelligence as a response to that same craving.

In this issue’s nonfiction, the authors’ perceptiveness carries readers into realities that, whether near or distant, become strikingly familiar, drawing the eye in and proving difficult to put aside. The ability to construct worlds that are so solid, so coherent, and so recognisably ours is a defining strength of these pieces. It not only enriches each story but also reaffirms storytelling as a powerful site for the construction of affect, deeply marked by our everyday memories and lived experiences. The attention to detail and the intimacy of the narratives presented here engage with global themes that capture enduring human concerns. These stories speak to the humanity that compels us towards narratives that shape us, challenge us, and reflect us back to ourselves. 

In ‘We, the Other Muslims’ Sabah Carrim explores a story that unsettles dominant stereotypes surrounding Muslims, revealing ambivalences, contradictions, and crucial nuances. In doing so, the piece actively resists what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie famously described as “the danger of a single story,” exposing the limitations of reductive generalisations. Through elegant and assured prose, Carrim invites us into the life of a young woman who refuses to conform to imposed social expectations while navigating the complexities of love, ambition, and self-definition. Damilola Oyedeji’s ‘Panicky Little Things’ examines psychological trauma as a consequence of gender-based violence with subtlety and emotional precision. By shifting narrative positions, at times inhabiting the voice of the victim, at others engaging with the language of the abuser, the story interrogates power, vulnerability, and survival. Who gets to define what abuse is? It offers a quiet yet deeply unsettling meditation on how violence inscribes itself into the psyche. In ‘Hope, AbdulHafeez’ Ahmad Adedimeji Amobi writes about death as a way of speaking profoundly about life. This beautifully wrought personal narrative captures love, loss, and the negotiation of legacy left behind by a deeply admired paternal figure. It is, at its core, a story that could belong to anyone but what makes it exceptional is Adedimeji’s careful use of intimate detail to reconstruct absence, showing how those who leave us continue to shape who we become. Finally, Sunmisola Odusola’s ‘The Body Paradox’ explores the contradictions of embodiment – the tension between inhabiting a body and longing to escape it. Moving between intimacy and flight, desire and shame, presence and erasure, the narrator searches for a way to exist without confinement, questioning what it means to be fully alive. Ultimately, what readers hold in their hands is a complex and beautifully assembled collection of nonfiction that captures essential values of our shared humanity. 

Photography always forces us to look not just at what is before us, but to truly see the story behind all the still images presented to us. Jean-Claude Tjitamunisa’s ‘Kintsugi Brotherhood’ takes a closer look at masculinity and uses the Japanese technique of repairing broken ceramics and other items with molten gold. This interrogation of masculinity is crucial to our understanding of what maleness, in all the forms it presents itself in, can be wounding and needs to be held (together). Insisting that we take a closer look is Brunel Johnson with his ‘Dispatches from The Gambia’ photoseries, which takes us along to one of his trips to a country that is known for its beauty, magic and resilience. Brunel is telling us that there is no one way to look at Africa, as every image gives us a new way of seeing. His striking photographs are a reminder that there is always more to the narrative.

We hope you enjoy every story, poem, essay and photograph in this issue, as we have specially curated this to you as a gift for your holiday reading.

Happy holidays!

Moustapha Mbacké Diop is a medical doctor and speculative fiction writer from Senegal. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Africa Risen, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, The Dark, and Sauúti Terrors: The Dark Side (Anthology). His Africanfuturist short story Blackwater Children was shortlisted for the 2024 Nommo Awards. He is an alumnus of the 2025 CANEX Creative Writing Workshop.

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Aria Deemie is a Liberian poet and journalist. She is an African Poetry Book Fund published author with her debut chapbook Humans for Sale, which explores human trafficking and the human cost of exploitation with raw honesty and lyricism. She writes at the intersection of climate, society, and story. She is New Narratives’ first dedicated climate, environment, and science reporter, investigating the human and ecological costs of failing systems, from forests felled for charcoal to weather warnings that never reach communities. An award-winning journalist, fact-checker, and storyteller, Aria blends rigorous reporting with empathy, giving voice to those too often unheard. With a background in Social Work and Clinical Social Work and fellowships with Africa Check and the Oxford Climate Journalism Network, Aria believes that clear, compassionate storytelling, whether in verse or reportage, can spark awareness, action, and change.

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Israel Campos is an award-winning Angolan writer and journalist and a PhD candidate at the University of Leeds. His debut novel, E o Céu Mudou de Cor (2023), and his forthcoming short story collection, Baloiço de Memória (2026), explore memory, identity, and postcolonial Angolan society. He has received the Ferreira de Castro Youth Literature Prize (2025) and the Imprensa Nacional–Casa da Moeda/Angola Literature Prize (2024), and is an alumnus of the CANEX Creative Writing Workshop (Aburi, 2024). He also works as a journalist for international media including the BBC, Voice of America, Al Jazeera, and The Wall Street Journal.