Bridging Worlds: Global Conversations on Creating Pan-African Speculative Literature In A Pandemic by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki

2020 was a landmark year in the lives of speculative fiction writers trying to both survive and create in the pandemic-lockdown breakout year. It was especially difficult for Black people, and Africans on the continent and in the diaspora.

The Bridging Worlds anthology examines those difficulties and how Black people and African writers navigated them. Even though we had myriad experiences in the different worlds we inhabit, we were nonetheless plagued by well, the same plague, no pun intended.

Bridging Worlds seeks to explore the threads and lines that connect us as we navigated this singular yet multifaceted experience, and show that connection in the various non-fiction pieces written in the diverse styles and forms the authors chose.

Bridging Worlds contains 18 pieces of speculative non-fiction, by 19 creatives aimed at documenting the experiences we had as speculative creators during that very challenging year.

It contains essays, interviews, narrative non-fiction pieces, whatever styles the creatives chose to tell their stories in. Stories that touch on their hopes, difficulties, losses, successes and further plans. It is meant to be an integral contribution to the speculative fiction canon and shed much needed light on the marginalized and scarcely represented Black and African experience.

The anthology is free to download here, for reasons not unrelated to publishing brouhaha I had with Amazon regarding my prior anthology, the Year’s Best African spec fic anthology. The entire event is summarised on The Mary Sue, with updates on my

You can add/rate the book on Goodreads

Table of Contents

Ghost Girls by Nikhil Singh

Blackness is not Monolithic, But Publishing Is by Zelda Knight

Voodoonauts & Afrofuturist Dreaming: On Creating a Summer Workshop for Black Writers during a Pandemic by Yvette Lisa Ndlovu

2020 Triumphs by B. Sharise Moore

An Interview with Chimedum Ohaegbu

Saving My Shadows by Eugen Bacon

Sheree Renée Thomas on Writing & Editing While Black During a Pandemic

The Year that Wasnt, yet Was by Milton Davis

An Interview with Dilman Dila

Expect the Unexpected

WTH? by Linda D. Addison

A Quarter in the Abyss: One Writers Jaunt Through the Bowels of Lockdown by Tobi Ogundiran

An Interview with Mazi Nwowu

If you havent noticed, the dystopia is already here by Edwin Okolo

Travails and Choices in a Time of Coronavirus by Joshua Uchenna Omenga

Why 2020 Rocked & 2021 Sucks by Mame Bougouma Diene

When Words Fail to Save by Shingai Njeri Kagunda

On African Speculative Fiction: A Discussion between Geoff Ryman and Wole Talabi

Wading in the Water By Nicole Givens Kurtz

About the Editor

Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki is a speculative fiction writer, editor, slush reader, publisher, conrunner and more who resides in Nigeria. He co-edited the groundbreaking Dominion anthology which was the first anthology by an African writer to win the British Fantasy award. It was also a finalist in the Locus, and This is Horror awards. His fiction has won the Otherwise and Nommo award, twice and been a finalist in the Nebula, Sturgeon and British Science Fiction Association awards.

He edited the first ever Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction anthology, and is co-editing the Africa Risen anthology alongside Zelda Knight and Sheree Renée Thomas, which will be published by Tordotcom in November 2022.

His works of fiction and non-fiction have appeared and are forthcoming in Asimov’s, Tordotcom, Apex Magazine, Strange Horizons, Galaxy’s Edge, NBC and more. He’s a member of the SFWA, BSFA, BFA, HWA and Codex. You can see his eligibility list for 2021 , visit his website odekpeki.com and find him on