Howard Meh-Buh Maximus in this conversation with Confidence Uwazuruike talks about getting shortlisted for the 2022 Afritondo Short Story Prize, his writing career, and his short story, Grotto. Grotto will be published in an anthology expected by Summer 2022.
Howard is a Cameroonian writer and scientist. His work has appeared in anthologies as well as literary magazines. He is a winner of the Miles Morland Scholarship 2020, Kalahari Short Story Prize (2), and a semi-finalist for the Alpines Fellowship 2019. He is an awardee of the W. Morgan and Lou Claire Rose Fellowship, currently studying for an MFA in Fiction.
The last time he reached out was on his 50th birthday, six years ago. Your mother was still alive. He had sent a picture of his family a couple of years before that. It showed him and his wife, a Turkish woman, with one girl and a younger boy, lighter than anyone in your family has ever been.
[Hear the story in the author’s voice—audio reading included]
The girls watched as their grandmother fanned out the cash and examined the bills, searching for counterfeits, counting and recounting. Her bangles chattered like teeth on her arms.
Lagos is an immensely populated city. The population figure is so high that there is a running dispute between the National Population Commission and the Lagos government over how many people actually live here.
It ends with a jaded god. Ogbunabali. The god who kills at night. They say he grants a request in exchange for five souls. It is called the ritual of exchange. It is well known. But, like every tale, there are four parts to it. The part you tell. The part I tell. The part we agree not to tell. The part Wiwe tells.
I was no longer in space, but in my bedroom. Mpoyo was gone, but Jana was still by my side, wiping my forehead and holding my hand. I looked at her and, for the first time, I clung to her, too.