Founded in the last quarter of 2011, Bakwa is a literary magazine where urgent and intelligent discussions on the state and direction of literary and cultural production take place. The dearth of critical and creative writing being its impetus, Bakwa’s approach is high-end creative writing and creative nonfiction, which is urgent and experimental in nature, while being at the same time a mirror of writing from Cameroon and Africa.

Our ever-evolving vision and approach has enabled us to move from filling the lacuna, which was our impetus, to engage and shape publics and networks of practice, as well as interrogate hierarchies of language through curated conceptual and collaborative print and distribution projects.

Young writers published early by Bakwa Magazine have gone on to win significant prizes: Abiola Oni won the Guardian and 4th Estate BAME Short Story prize in 2016; Bengono Esola Edouard (winner of the Bakwa Magazine Short Story Prize) won the concours litteraire nationale jeunes auteurs 2017; Socrates Mbamalu was awarded the Saraba nonfiction manuscript prize and longlisted for the Writivism Nonfiction Prize; Munachim Amah won the Writivism Short Story 2017 Prize;  Nkiacha Atemnkeng (Runner-up for the Bakwa Magazine Short Story Prize) was longlisted for the Short Story Day Africa Prize 2019; and Howard Meh-Buh Maximus won the Morland Writing Scholarship in 2020.

NOTABLE PROJECTS

For its third issue, in 2012, Bakwa collaborated with The Ofi Press, an online literary magazine based in Mexico, and edited by Jack Little. The Ofi Press published a special West African edition, with content in English and Spanish, which focused on West Africa, while Bakwa, in turn, published a special Mexican issue, focusing on Mexican art, culture and society, with most of the content in English and some Spanish translations. The project was lauded by several journals and outlets, especially the online website Heritage 1960.

In 2015, Bakwa was part of #100DaysofAfricanReads, a social media project curated by Angela Wachuka, Executive Director of Kwani?, which entailed “a series of portraits on books, writers and readers, over a 100 day period … highlighting the work of an African author in print and online”. With the exception of an excerpt from Awes Osman’s novel, Skinless Goat in Somalia, Bakwa’s contribution to the project was made up of excerpts and stories from female Cameroonian writers.

In the same year, in response to The Simpsons’ episode “The Princess Guide”, Bakwa did a two-part series on The Simpsons, wherein, bloggers, writers, cultural thinkers and academics were asked to comment on “The Princess Guide” episode. Most of the reactions highlighted poor research, one-dimensional characters, the challenge of portraying believable Nigerians, and the episode’s relatable character, Princess Kemi. This project on The Simpsons was later chosen by Dead Homer Society, for the “weekend reading” section.

The Bakwa Magazine Short Story Prize (in partnership with the Goethe-Institut in Cameroon and Phoneme Media in LA, California), aimed at discovering a new generation of Cameroonian writers under 39. The shortlisted stories, as well as commissioned stories will be published by Bakwa Books.

In 2017, the Goethe-Institut in Lagos and Yaounde in collaboration with Saraba Magazine and Bakwa Magazine organized a series of exchanges and workshops on creative non-fiction for Cameroonian and Nigerian writers. Within the framework of this project, readings took place at IYA, University of Lagos and the Ake Festival. Writing produced during this project will be published in a forthcoming book titled Limbe to Lagos: Nonfiction from Cameroon and Nigeria.

For 100 days, between December 2, 2017 and March 12, 2018, we ran a social media campaign to shed more light on Cameroonian writing, called 100 Days of Cameroonian Literature (#100DaysofCameroonianLiterature). We shared book covers accompanied by short reviews on social media daily, as well as started conversations around these books. We did this both to showcase the diversity of Cameroonian writing as well as debunk the notion that there isn’t enough writing from Cameroon. We are indebted to an earlier project by Angela Wachuka, called #100DaysofAfricanReads, which ran from October 10, 2014 to January 17, 2015, in which we contributed by showcasing (mostly) female Cameroonian writers.

BAKWACAST

BakwaCast is a periodic, living archive, which is conversational, intimate and introspective, and will include the Bakwa Magazine Reading Series, as well as other iterations and will occasionally pop-up in different cities. We’ll look at what makes interesting people tick, from artists, curators, writers, techies, performers, to policy makers.

BAKWA BOOKS

Bakwa Books is an independent publisher which focuses on literary fiction, creative nonfiction, and translation. The desire to replicate the vision of Bakwa Magazine, as well as the absence of innovative local publishing channels in Cameroon, necessitated the creation of Bakwa Books.

The Bakwa Magazine Reading Series is a public quarterly event which brings together a wide selection of writers, translators, editors and poets, and connects them to various local communities by hosting events in different cities.