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ZamaShort

@zamashort.bsky.social

98 followers 7 following 330 posts

ZamaShort is solely focused on the amazing powerhouse that is the single short story. We champion and add to the ever-growing multi-genre canon of African literature excellence and diversity.

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ZamaShort @zamashort.bsky.social · Dec 13

ZamaShort is a new project from StoryTime Publishing who brought you the StoryTime magazine, and the African Roar and AfroSF series of anthologies

Reposted by ZamaShort

Dare @dsfalowo.bsky.social · 19h

my debut collection is officially out in Nigeria today! after being born in the US & the UK in 2023, it came here to meet me halfway. i am fizzing with gratitude to the Supreme Being, to the publisher, to kindest friends, and to all future readers.

Welcome to the weird.👹

ZamaShort @zamashort.bsky.social · 17h

As per the StoryTime Publishing mandate initialised in 2007, ZamaShort continues to champion and add to the ever-growing canon of African literature excellence and diversity.

ZamaShort @zamashort.bsky.social · 17h

The ZamaShort imprint series is solely focused on the amazing powerhouse that is the short story. We give each short story its own publication so that it may be read and enjoyed fully as a stand-alone publication.

ZamaShort @zamashort.bsky.social · 17h

Kobo: www.kobo.com/se/en/ebook/...
Barnes & Noble: www.barnesandnoble.com/w/sindi-fair...
Smashwords: www.smashwords.com/books/view/1...
Fable: fable.co/book/x-97891...
Thalia: www.thalia.de/shop/home/ar...
Vivlio: shop.vivlio.com/product/9789...

ZamaShort @zamashort.bsky.social · 17h

Get ‘Sindi Fair’ Here:

Direct from ZamaShort in our Bundle or by Subscription: selfany.com/s/ZamaShort

Amazon: www.amazon.com/gp/product/B...
(Also Amazon UK, DE, FR, ES, IT, NL, JP, BR, CA, MX, AU, IN)
Apple: books.apple.com/us/book/sind...
Libby: share.libbyapp.com/title/12357103

ZamaShort | Selfany

The ZamaShort imprint publishes excellent multi-genre single short stories by African authors, monthly.

ZamaShort @zamashort.bsky.social · 17h

In a Nigeria where being other, and loving differently is a Sword of Damocles, I wanted to look within and invoke a fantasy of queer love and possibility, out of time, but absolutely eternal.

ZamaShort @zamashort.bsky.social · 17h

I was collaging because I did not want to excavate or press the queer into traditional spaces or cultures where research has revealed queer ghosts, but I couldn’t yet imagine a utopian vision of queerness.

ZamaShort @zamashort.bsky.social · 17h

There would be monarchy, gods, and domains. Beneath the surface, Cinderella and Persephone would dance.

ZamaShort @zamashort.bsky.social · 17h

It was folkloric, and also gently mythical. Like a classic fantasy, it would be situated in West Africa but have no locations or names that could be traced to known cultures or languages in the region.

ZamaShort @zamashort.bsky.social · 17h

since most of my older writing was situated around girls or women, and their generally heterosexual realities in relation with the common mystical and the indigenous metaphysical.

ZamaShort @zamashort.bsky.social · 17h

I began to write again – a fairytale, featuring those energies swirling around a pair of young men. This was possibly fostered by brief binges in the world of boys’ love television, and also a desire to bare my bones in text, -

ZamaShort @zamashort.bsky.social · 17h

The adjacent plunges into hell and returns to a lush ordinariness that constantly happened to my mind, reminded me of Persephone.

ZamaShort @zamashort.bsky.social · 17h

A while after I returned to Lagos from Ibadan, I started to go out, attempting to forge new connections, but I always found myself rushing to get home (where I was suffocating but felt safe, bed-rotting) before a particular time. I couldn’t ignore the Cinderella of it all.

ZamaShort @zamashort.bsky.social · 17h

I left home.

My mind deteriorated.

I returned home.

And stopped writing.

ZamaShort @zamashort.bsky.social · 17h

Things got published in magazines and anthologies, enough to make a collection and seek its publication.

ZamaShort @zamashort.bsky.social · 17h

To find a centre, I began to experiment with writing horror stories. These trial tales were adored. I then tried my hand at other writing things – fantasies, science fiction, soon I tipped into weirdness and slipperiness.

ZamaShort @zamashort.bsky.social · 17h

Romance was far away from me after a string of failures, yet a faith rung in me, even in my delirium, of the remaining possibility of love to bring magic and transcendence into ordinary lives.

ZamaShort @zamashort.bsky.social · 17h

Into university and the Real World, a new twist came upon my life, in the manifestation of invisible disability – an acute neurodivergence that worsened my social sensitivities until I became unable to understand reality, or go outside, or complete school.

ZamaShort @zamashort.bsky.social · 17h

And the more I sought love, the more it seemed that the elders were right; love was for white bodies and those with wealth. There was nothing there for me.

ZamaShort @zamashort.bsky.social · 17h

I was looking for something that shone with the kindness of a good folktale, hoping that the fairytale’s happily-ever-after would stick to my life and my visions of love, which no amount of prayer could stop me from changing.

ZamaShort @zamashort.bsky.social · 17h

Still my body was found by the others, and I fell into trysts and barely-romances that lived shorter than the mayfly.

ZamaShort @zamashort.bsky.social · 17h

To be an acceptable boy, I ironed out my curves, tried to become unsoft, hid the soprano, bared the teeth and the fist.

ZamaShort @zamashort.bsky.social · 17h

The stern god of the colonial had brought his religion here to make us holy and clean, to remove the filth of native ways of seeing and feeling, and that came with the virulence of gender essentialism and homophobia.

ZamaShort @zamashort.bsky.social · 17h

I now had to turn the energies I would have used to seek and nurture teenage love affairs, into hiding myself. To seeking comfort and knowledge in books, in choirs, in forest walks, in church work.

ZamaShort @zamashort.bsky.social · 17h

Something gruesome that happened to you like an accident, a deformity God didn’t give you. My dreams of love gradually went numb, entering deep into hibernation.