He was called farmer’s boy within the household, he said, because of what his fingers could do on a piece of farmland.

But then the war came, and they rapidly became adults, people who could make their own decisions.

We don’t stop to ask why everything we do must be in service of a goal. Some things do not have a point, only existing for pleasure and delight, and that is part of the magic of being alive.

A poem on Liberia by Edwin Olu Bestman

I can imagine him, my father, some pride in his voice, informing his friend that his son, a boy they had watched grow up, had left home.

They will forbid their people from voting for anyone that is not Musa. The subjects will take the news to their four wives. Their wives will tell their neighbours. The neighbours will tell their children, and the children will write ‘Sai Musa’ on every wall they see on every street.

When you give him rice, he barely eats a spoonful. You don’t know if it is because the rice is plain even for your standards or if it is because pain has filled his stomach.

I just remember that he looked like a man in no hurry, like he owned time.

A poem by Ayooluwa Olasupo

there was a breeze that day. / The day the Oba’s artisan / began to model Okukor / using his fine metal comb.

Morality, then, is a weapon, and generations of Africans have been indoctrinated into its famed cult. You should then be far from startled that the mere mention of homosexuality, although practised in veiled quarters for traditional, spiritual, or aesthetic purposes, is never given a fair hearing

The messiahs’ miracle left us with baskets full of brokenness heavy for us to bear

Short story by Joshua Pregbaba

His eyes were what set him apart. But not because one pupil was black and the other blue. It was because, unlike the rest of the population, they held something aside from emptiness.

Of what are we to feel nostalgic? / Of faraway screams lost to the ears of mourning siblings?

“You are young and firm. That is good. These days, fresh blood brings in more money.”

A poem on dying by Yvonne Nezianya

Desta’s winning story, Ethio-Cubano, is a collection of memories where Cuban and Ethiopian cultures collide.

Advice to young writers: Don’t give up. It is not an easy pursuit.

I try to create an internal literary festival with my writing - Rémy Ngamije