I have never met Dzekashu MacViban in person, but I first read his work over a decade ago when I founded PalaPala magazine. The site—a digital platform for new writing and the politics of art—was created to amplify new Anglophone Cameroonian writing and writing from the African diaspora. During the four years of its existence, MacViban along with the likes of Patrice Nganang, Tolu Ogunlesi, Belinda Otas, JKS Makokha, Minna Salami enlivened the platform with poems, essays and perspectives that undermined the notion of the paucity of “our” stories, while highlighting the intersections that animate African and diasporic experiences.

I stopped publishing PalaPala in 2012, and months later MacViban launched Bakwa Magazine to continue the task of showcasing new writing from Cameroon and across.  Since its founding, Bakwa Magazine has evolved into a hydra-headed institution with a publishing arm (Bakwa Books), a podcast (BakwaCast), and has recently launched its creative writing and literary translation workshops in collaboration with the likes of the Goethe Institute Kamerun and the University of Bristol.

Over a series of emails, we discussed Bakwa’s vision and the state of creative writing in Cameroon among other subjects.