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Meet the Team
• Meet the Team
MUBANGA KALIMAMUKWENTO
Editor-in-chief
MUBANGA is the author of Shipikisha: A Novel (Forthcoming from Dzanc Books, 2026) winner of the 2024 Dzanc Prize for Fiction, Obligations to the Wounded: Stories (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2024) winner of the 2024 Drue Heinz Literature Prize and 2025 Minnesota Book Award; Another Mother Does Not Come When Yours Dies: Poems (Wayfarer Books, 2025) finalist for the 2023 Center for African American Poetry and Poetics (CAAPP) Book Prize; unmarked graves (Tusculum University Press, 2022) winner of the 2023 Tusculum Review Poetry Chapbook Prize, and The Mourning Bird (Jacana, 2019) winner of the 2018/2019 Dinaane Debut Fiction Award. Her creative work has also appeared in adda, Aster(ix), Isele Magazine, Contemporary Verse 2, Kweli, Overland, on Netflix, and elsewhere. Her editorial work can be found or is forthcoming in Shenandoah, the Water~Stone Review, Doek! Literary Magazine and Safundi. She founded Ubwali Literary Magazine and co-founded the Idembeka Creative Writing Workshop. When she’s not writing or editing, Mubanga serves as a Mentor at the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. She is currently a PhD student in the Department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota (Twin-Cities), where she is also an Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change (ICGC) Scholar. Her research centers on the autoethnographic study of the lives of Zambian married women who are long-term survivors of HIV.
FISKE NYIRONGO
CNF Editor
FISKE is a Zambian author and journalist based in Lusaka. Her editorial work can be found at Bird Story Agency, an African news agency and project of Africa No Filter. Some of her nonfiction work appears in the following publications: The Kalahari Review, LAPP Magazine UK, Meeting of Minds UK, Urban Ivy Chicago, The Kitchen Witch Newsletter, Boldly Mental, Nikki Darling Australia, Our House LA, and Pink Boot Magazine. She was a 2020 PenPen African Writers Resident. Her fiction work appears in online spaces such as BrittlePaper (The Go the Way Your Blood Beats Anthology), The Writers Space Africa 2019 magazine, Love issue, and Unbound magazine. Her first children's title was published in Cricket Magazine’s holiday-themed issue in 2019. She has co-created three children’s books for the South African Book Dash marathons held in Johannesburg, online, and in Italy. Her fantasy novella, Finding Love in Betrayal, was published by Love Africa Press in 2019. Her short stories, Pain by Any Other Name and The Blues, were shortlisted and longlisted for the 2019 and 2022 Kalemba Short Story Prize. She is a graduate of the 2019 Afro Young Adult Workshop held in Johannesburg by the Goethe Institut and facilitated by South African writer, Mohale Mashigo. Her short story “Aftermath” was published in the Myaambo Zambian anthology in 2020.
MALI KAMBANDU
Fiction Editor
MALI is a writer based in Lusaka, Zambia. In 2024, her novel manuscript When the Shadows Call was named runner-up in the Island Prize for first-time African novelists. That same year, her creative nonfiction piece I Lost My Appetite was published in the inaugural edition of Ubwali Literary Magazine and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. In 2022, Mali guest-edited Lolwe Literary Magazine (Issue 5) and was named Brittle Paper’s Writer of the Month (June) for her piece When There Are No Words. She won the inaugural Kalemba Short Story Prize in 2018 for A Hand to Hold and was shortlisted for the Writivism Short Story Award for The Photograph. Mali’s work has appeared in Gyara Journal, AfricanWriter.com, The Kalahari Review, Menelique, Maapilim, and elsewhere.
VUMA PHIRI
Poetry Editor
VUMA is a Zambian-born poet living in Australia on Whadjuk Noongar country. Her writing has been published in the anthology, Under the Paving Stones, the Beach, and in Black Ballad UK, Ubwali Literary Magazine and SBS Voices. In 2024, Vuma was the winner of the Arts Queensland XYZ Prize for Spoken Word Poetry. Vuma was among the recipients of the Centre for Stories Hot Desk Fellowship, and shortlisted for the Kat Muscat Fellowship for Writers and Editors. In writing, Vuma hopes her voice is an echo reverberating the poet’s dream for liberation and sovereignty. Performing for audiences throughout WA, Vuma imagines vivid futures where we are all free. Vuma is also passionate about stories, and promoting and teaching diverse storytelling that illustrate the vibrant, multifaceted, and enduring stories in her community. Her personal writing can be found on Substack through her newsletter "Our Poems Never Die with Vuma Phiri.”
AKAL MOHAN
Interviews Editor
AKAL is a Kenyan short story writer, essayist and poet. He has previously been shortlisted for the Africa Writers’ Award in poetry. Akal is also a 2023 Idembeka Creative Writing fellow and Ibua Novel Manuscript workshop attendee. In 2022, he was a recipient of two digital residencies organised by the University of East Anglia, one of which resulted to a short story collection that he contributed to. Akal reads in trust and writes in faith.