What does it mean to write when the present fractures, when history roars and the future hesitates? What does it mean to be African – and to name it – in a time when borders bruise more than they bind, and truths are policed like crimes?This issue is not a map – nor the territory – it is a tremor. A tremor of voices rising across the continent and its diasporic echoes: from Togo to Malawi, from Kenya to Haiti (yeah, even Haiti, the sister far, far away, but close to heart), from the Sahel to the Caribbean's haunted shores. It is a chorus composed not by geography, but by urgency and unison.
Spotlight: Africa
Young Voices From Africa
Editorial Team
| Regional Editor | Ayi-Renaud Dossavi |
| Managing Editor | Ege Dündar |
Authors and Empty Chair
| Malawi | Wongani Nyasulu and Wezi Glory Msukwa-Panje |
| Togo | Ayi Renaud Dossavi and Wamo Nunyali |
| South Africa | Bongani Kona - Karen Jennings and Mercy Kannemeyer |
| Haiti | Lesly Succes |
| Eritrea | Empty Chair: Emmanuel Asrat |
| Rwanda | Empty Chair: Innocent Bahati |
| Egypt | Empty Chair: Galal El Bahairy |
| Sudan | Empty Chair: Abdel Wahab Youssif |
Table of Contents
Writing in the Midst of the Storm, an African Mosaic
Regional Overview
By Regional Editor: Ayi Renaud Dossavi
What does it mean to write when the present fractures, when history roars and the future hesitates? What does it mean to be African – and to name it – in a time when borders bruise more than they bind, and truths are policed like crimes?
This issue is not a map – nor the territory – it is a tremor. A tremor of voices rising across the continent and its diasporic echoes: from Togo to Malawi, from Kenya to Haiti (yeah, even Haiti, the sister far, far away, but close to heart), from the Sahel to the Caribbean's haunted shores. It is a chorus composed not by geography, but by urgency and unison.
Africa writes. It always has. It writes when it dances, it writes when it mourns, it writes when it disappears from headlines and yet burns behind the curtain. It writes under lockdowns, under curfews, under censorship codes scribbled by the frightened hands of power. It writes in Creole and Kiswahili, in Shona and Yoruba, in Ewe, in Arabic, Wolof, Lingala, Portuguese, French, English – and in the silences between these languages, where truth waits for someone brave enough to speak it.
This selection of texts, shaped by young writers and seasoned rebels of the word, is neither a celebration nor a lamentation – it is a reckoning. A reckoning with the many Africas we inherit and (re)invent. A continent plural in its tongues, diverse in its anthems to freedom, scattered in its wounds, and indivisible in its longing for dignity.
Yes, we write from the tremble. We dig deep into the cradle of humanity and excavate… the solemn and universal Ecce Homo. Because in Senegal, democracy flinches yet stands. In the DRC, silence is sold cheap but integrity still murmurs. In Malawi and Zambia, freedom is a fleeting shadow, again and again cast as a spell. In Uganda, Ghana, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe – and so on and so on and so many faces of the struggle against complacency, and war, and tyranny.
And yet — there is breath. There is verse. There is voice.
These pages are inhabited by those who refuse to be still: students with heads full of banned books, women who remember the taste of exile, young poets who write through firewalls, and storytellers who smuggle futures through fiction. They do not write from safety, but from necessity. Not from nostalgia, but from resistance. Boldly quiet or squirmishly loud.
To be young and African today is to inherit a freedom both promised and postponed. It is to dance with the memory of liberation, while side-stepping its betrayal. It is to look authoritarianism in the eye — whether it wears a soldier’s boots or a bureaucrat’s smile — and say, we are not done speaking yet.
Facing forward… We must reinvent
new forms of resistance.
In the age of the Internet and the multiplicity of voices, we must find a way to speak, to shout—and at the same time, to hide.
Tomorrow is a reality unlike any other, one we must continue to sketch, again and again, no matter what. We hold hope that our words will not be in vain, that they will fall into the right ear at the right time, and murmur “Keep the flag up, pass the torch…”
This issue is our way of not looking away.
It is a journal, yes — but also a shield.
A whisper against forgetting.
A song smuggled past checkpoints.
A refusal.
Welcome to The Trembling Pen.
Welcome to this African chorus — fractured, fierce, and still writing.
Main Writers
Innocent Bahati (Rwanda), Galal Behairy (Egypt) and Emmanuel Asrat (Eritrea)
Empty Chairs
Since the 1980s PEN International has used the Empty Chair at events to symbolise a writer who could not be present because they were imprisoned, detained, disappeared, threatened or killed. We invite our community to learn about these writers and to show solidarity with them.
Empty Chair: Innocent Bahati (Rwanda)
23 April 2025
Empty Chair: Amanuel Asrat (Eritrea)
23 April 2025
Empty Chair: Galal El Behairy (Egypt)
23 April 2025
Empty Chair: Abdel Wahab Yousif (Sudan)
23 April 2025
Learn more
About Us
Tomorrow Club makes space for the voices of brave young writers, activists and creatives from around the world. Connecting them to each other and creating supportive exchanges and solidarity activities across borders that reflect on shared conditions, pressing issues and threats to free expression.
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