29 LitMag Issues Online

Between January 2012 and March 2015, I edited a literary magazine called NTLitMag, a name derived from the name of the parent site: NigeriansTalk. It started as a quiet place online to talk about interesting contemporary literary issues, feature new and old voices, and document our creative voices.

There was no set format or schedule; each issue came out when the need arose for it — sometimes once a month, sometimes twice in the month. It settled into a once-in-a-month rhythm at some point, but it was not always the norm. What was constant was my editorial introduction which set the tone for the issue, stated a certain point of view, or just gave space for me to relieve my mind on some contemporary issue. There was no limit to size either. Sometimes, there were two contributions. Sometimes, there were twenty. I enjoyed that flexibility.

After three years, other commitments on my time had made it impossible for me to continue to edit the magazine. I opened up the possibility of guest-editing, and we got one or two guest-editors, and that was it. The last issue was published on March 11, 2015, covering 37 months and 15 days.

During the last week of 2019, I had the course to revisit the project. Reading it felt both foreign and immediate, representing both an interesting point in the creative fermentation of the generation to which I belong and a throwback to what seemed like a simpler time. I was a teacher of English in a high school with a conservative Catholic bent, with a lot on my hands in the classroom and at home, yet with enough presence of mind to maintain the rigorous schedule that the magazine required. It felt — as I look back now — as if each edition was a sort of escape that gave a complementary satisfaction to the creative thirst. The days went by pretty fast.

We published twenty-nine issues in all, with themes as varied and original as they were also contemporary and urgent. And although I’ve carried the project with me in some mental form since then, the primary impetus for returning to look at it now was the renewed conversation on Nigerian social media in late 2019 about the right of same-sex relationship-oriented people to get married. A Nigerian law in 2015 had effectively criminalized not just marriage but orientation and — horrors of horrors — association. There was a lot of social media backlash to the law at the time, but, as we’ve seen in many cases, it was not enough to change the government’s mind, or the law.

Someone had brought up this fact on Twitter in December 2019 and it had generated a maelstrom, with the voices in support of the discriminatory law seemingly louder than those against it. It felt just like yesterday when we published The Gay Issue (Issue #25) of the LitMag in February 2014, featuring contributions from a number of writers, including Ayọ̀délé Ọlọ́fintùádé, Nwachukwu Egbunike, Elnathan John, Mukoma wa Ngugi, Jude Dibia, Pearl Osibu, and Binyavanga Wainaina, the latter who would go on to come out himself as gay right before the issue came out. I do not remember any backlash from that time. If anything, it was well-read and well-shared. So, what happened? Had these new angry voices not read it? Have things changed so much for the worse? Or has social media just become more accessible to more intolerant voices, so they appear much more amplified? It was time, I thought, to bring back these writings to light — if not to change anyone’s mind (it’s not clear that literature can always do that anyway), but to illustrate the diverse and earnest voices that addressed the issue at the time, in their raw and vulnerable honesty.

In any case, these were not the only issues the NTLitMag addressed. Three issues (Issue #5, Issue #17, and Issue #22), for instance, were dedicated to recently departed artists: Ify Agwu, Chinua Achebe, and Kofi Awonoor respectively. The issue dedicated to the passing of Chinua Achebe became the most read in the history of the publication. Others addressed global issues like war and displacement, or local ones like the publishing industry — or subject of attention of African writers — on the continent. The Caine Prize was a regular subject, generating substantial ink in commentary, interviews, reviews, and online conversations. That fervour seems to have gone now. The Caine comes and goes every year now without the usual hullabaloo about the subject of its stories. Perhaps its most fervent critics got tired (Binyavanga Wainaina, one of the most prominent, passed in 2019) or people just stopped prioritizing the role of the Caine in determining the direction of African literature. In one relevant instance (Issue #13), there was a direct response to my editorial from Ikhide Ikheloa who was then also immediately taken to task by Jeremy Weate (then publisher of Cassava Republic). Both letters have been re-published here.

Reading through the issues then often gives the disembodied former editor a sense that a whole universe had been condensed into a series of pages. Tẹ́jú Cole is no longer on Twitter. Neither have some of the writers who were first published on our pages. Kọ́ládé Àjàyí, for instance, seemed to have notably fallen out of circulation. (We published him Issue #2, Issue #11, Issue #13, and Issue #23). My interview with Tọ́pẹ́ Fọlárìn, following a positive review of his shortlisted short story, was published in our Issue #19 right before he won the Caine Prize in 2013. But when I later “unfavourably” reviewed his subsequent short story which was also shortlisted for the same prize in 2016, he unfollowed me on all social media, creating a small storm in the Nigerian literary scene for a few weeks. (The second short story eventually became his first novel, in 2019, which I also reviewed here). Some consolation: my essay In The Shadow of Context (March 2017) came out of a direct response to that 2016 controversy.

In another interview with Aaron Bady (Issue #19), the literary journalist spilled the behind-the-scenes details of his own previous interview with Chimamanda Adichie that had caused its own mini-controversy. My interview with Nnedi Okorafor (Issue #18), which was republished in the Guardian of May of 2013, got me an invitation to write the author’s profile in Literary Wonderlands, adding her as the only Nigerian work on that list of literary works from around world which made use of “the greatest fictional worlds.” Bassey Ikpi, poet and mental health advocate (Issue #27) has now published a NY Times bestselling book of essays, while Sọjí Cole (Issue #6) has gone on to win Nigeria’s biggest literature prize for Drama. A lot, it seemed, had happened.

So, I suspect that these will present — to some future researcher — a decent record of the creative preoccupations of a particular generation of writers many of whom have gone on to different (and sometimes bigger) things. I found some of my old poems, which have not found a home anywhere else, within these records— including my playful adaptation of Wọlé Ṣóyínká’s Telephone Conversation for a more modern relationship, and a different social problem (Issue #7). The Three Poems on Syria (Issue #21) may also become particularly interesting in light of these new drums of war with Iran. In April 2013, Elnathan John, Nigerian novelist and satirist, debuted as a poet on our pages (Issue #20). As far as I know, this is the only place he’s ever let those poems be seen publicly.

The contributors to the issues are predominantly Nigerian — as the name of the site suggested, but the magazine was in no way limited to them. There were contributions from outside of the country (as with Mafoya Dossoumon from Benin, Ivor Hartmann from Zimbabwe, Binyavanga Wainaina and Mukoma wa Ngugi from Kenya) and out of the continent (as with Paula Varsavsky from Argentina and Anja Choon from Germany). Neither were the subject matters limited by geography or gender or any artificial boundaries. And even though the issues were mostly in English, there were entries in other languages too, as with Tẹ́jú Cole’s Kádàrá Kékèké (Issue #3) which were Yorùbá self-translation of some of his Small Fates writings he published on Twitter around the time, and Edwin Eriata Oribhabor’s Tu Puem in Nigerian Pidgin (Issue #18). I take some credit for some of these multilingual experiments.

In any case — this brings me to the purpose of this post — the web is an ephemeral place. A website here today might be gone tomorrow. Because of that, I have got all the issues of the LitMag turned into downloadable PDFs which can, and should, be downloaded and shared.

You can find them all here.

Here’s a quick stat: POETRY: 128. ESSAY: 48. SHORT STORY: 29. TRANSLATION: 1. DRAMA: 2. EXCERPT: 1. INTERVIEW: 14.

And here is a record of all the writers featured in them, covering different countries, sometimes across different genres, arranged alphabetically:

A. Igoni Barrett, Aaron Bady, Abimbola Adelakun, Adaeze Ibechukwu, Adebiyi Olusolape, Adebiyi Olusolape, Adeola Opeyemi, Agatha Aduro, Alkasim Abdulkadir, Amara Nicole Okolo, Amina Thula, Anja Choon, Ayodeji Matuluko, Ayodele Abimbola, Ayodele Morocco-Clarke, Ayodele Olofintuade, Ayodele Olofintuade, Babatunde Fagbayibo, Bassey Ikpi, Benson Eluma, Binyavanga Wainaina, Bolaji Olatunde, Bomi Ehimony, Carl Terver, Chika Unigwe, Chioma Iwunze-Ibiam, Chris Ihidero, D.M Aderibigbe, Dami Ajayi, Deji Toye, Echezonachukwu Nduka, Echezonachukwu Nduka, Edwin Eriata Oribhabor, Efe Okogu, Eghosa Imasuen, Elnathan John, Emmanuel Iduma, Emmanuel Uweru Okoh, Femi Morgan, Fiyinfoluwa Akinsiku, Geosi Gyasi, Hajo Isa, Ikhide Ikheloa, Isaac Attah Ogazi, Ivor W. Hartmann, Jeremy Weate, Joseph Ushie, Joy Isi Bewaji, Jude Dibia, Jumoke Verissimo, Kayode Odumboni, Kelechi Njoku, Kola Adeniyi, Kolade Ajayi, Kunle Aduloju, Mafoya Dossoumon, Martins Kiibaati, Michael Odejimi, Mukoma wa Ngugi, Niyi Osundare, Nnedi Okorafor, Nnorom Azuonye, Nonso Uzozie, Nwachukwu Egbunike, Obinna Udenwe, Obiwu Iwanyanwu, Odetomi Festus Olasumbo,Okwuje Israel Chukwuemeka, Ola Nubi, Olumide Abimbola, Omohan Ebhodaghe, Oyindamola Affinih, Paula Varsavsky, Pearl Osibu, Peter Akinlabi, Razak Malik, Richard Ali, Rotimi Babatunde, Seyi Ojenike, Sifa Asani Gowon, Soji Cole, Sophia Agbasiere, Sunday Akonni Moshood, Sunmaila Umaisha, Sylva Nze Ifedigbo, Teju Cole, Temie Giwa, Temitayo Olofinlua, Tolu Abrahams, Tosin Gbogi, Uche Peter Umez, Uche Peter Umez, Unoma Azuah, Victor Chris, Victor Ehikhamenor, Vivekanand Jha, Yemi Soneye, and Yomi Ogunsanya. A reference document showing each writer’s contribution to the series can be found here.

The web issues of LitMag are still online, and can still be accessed via the NigeriansTalk website — for anyone interested. This attempt is only for more mobile sharing of issues as autonomous documents since each PDF contains each separate issue. Perhaps, it might be a good idea to collate all the poems and short stories published in the series under a physical book collection. Perhaps! That would be an interesting project. But, as I will continue to insist, the electronic platform — with all its limitations in ephemerality — is still as valid a platform for the transmission of literature.

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I want to thank Ìfẹ́olúwa for his work in digitizing the Issues, and Àrẹ̀mú Adéọlá for collating other relevant data therein. Their support made my task here a lot easier.