Hawa Jande Golakai spent her childhood in her homeland of Liberia, later living in several African countries when her family fled the civil war. In 2011 she published her debut novel, The Lazarus Effect, a crime thriller that was nominated for several awards. She was nominated by the Hay Festivals as one of the thirty-nine most promising African writers under the age of forty.

Kofi Akpabli has twice been named CNN Multi-choice African Journalist for Arts and Culture. A teacher of Communication Studies at Central University, he lives in Accra, Ghana, with his wife and children.

Kevin Eze was born in Nigeria, where he began writing and learning the piano at the age of seven. He is the author of The Peacekeeper’s Wife. He lives and writes in Senegal.

Isaac Otidi Amuke lives and writes in Nairobi, Kenya. He has written nonfiction for the literary journal Kwani? since 2012. He received the 2013 Jean Jacques Rousseau Fellowship from the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany, and is working on a two-part memoir on student activism and life as an asylum seeker.

Mark Gevisser is a South African writer whose books include A Legacy of Liberation: Thabo Mbeki and the Future of the South African Dream, which won the Alan Paton Award in 2007. He has also written an award-winning documentary film, The Man Who Drove With Mandela.