Founder, Editor + Creative Director
AMY SALL
SUNU Advisory Board
SOULEYMANE CISSÉ, MAMADOU DIOUF, SOULEYMANE BACHIR DIAGNE, ABOUBAKAR SANOGO,
DENISE FERREIRA DA SILVA, MBYE CHAM, MAHEN BONETTI, SAMBA GADJIGO. N’GONÉ FALL, MANTHIA DIAWARA
SUNU Contributors
ANNA CELESTE
Anna Celeste is a student, writer, and artist who lives in Brooklyn. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Culture and Media from The New School, and she is pursuing a career in social work. Writing is her primary passion, which she uses as an avenue for self expression, critical theory, and the appreciation of art.
Dalia Elhassan is a Sudanese-American poet and writer by way of Miami and lives in NYC. She is the author of In Half Light, a chapbook in the New-Generation African Poets Series (Sita) published in collaboration with Akashic Books and the African Poetry Book Fund. Her work has placed in several competitions in the past and is featured in a number of publications, including The Kenyon Review, The Oakland Arts Review, and Rattle #59. She is the recipient of the Hajja Razia Sharif Sheikh Prize for nonfiction and was shortlisted for the 2018 Brunel International African Poetry Prize.
Instagram: @daliaelhassan | Twitter: @daliaelhassan
DULCIE ABRAHAMS ALTASS
Dulcie Abrahams Altass is a London-born curator who lives in Dakar, Senegal. She is Curator of Programs at RAW Material Company in Dakar where she has co-curated the exhibitions The revolution will come in a form we cannot yet imagine (2018), Toutes les fautes qu’il y avait dans le monde, je les ai ramassées (2018) and PO4 (Blackout) (2019). Recent projects of note include Kan jaa ta; From the shadow into the light (Bamako Encounters Photography Biennale, 2019) and Condition Report 4: Stepping out of line; Art collectives and translocal parallelism (Dhaka Art Summit, 2020). Her work in Senegal has included research on diverse topics ranging from the country’s performance art history to the nexus of hip hop and contemporary art in the country, and she has also been a member of artist’s collective Les Petites Pierres.
moshood
moshood lives somewhere in Ghana – from where he writes across genres. His work has appeared in a number of publications, both online and in print. He loves rain and fancies himself an egalitarian. He is currently trying out other exercises in self-expression.
Instagram: @formoshood
NYAREETA GACH
Nyareeta Gach is an Artist, Poet and aspiring Gallerist fervent in her desires as a professional Artist.
Born in Maiwut, Sudan in 1992 during the nation's Second Civil War, at only 9-months-old, Nyareeta and her immediate family members fled their war-torn nation to seek sanctuary in Ethiopia, then in later years found asylum in Hagadera Refugee camp in the town of Dadaab, Kenya where she spent most of her childhood.
In 2001, Nyareeta and her family immigrated to the United States where she grew up in central Minnesota.
In 2010, Nyareeta Gach attended the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design and began her study in Fine Arts with an emphasis in Painting.
The ambitious young artist currently lives in New York City where she exhibits and continues her practice.
Instagram: @nyareeta
SIIMA ITABAAZA
Siima Itabaaza is a writer living in Kampala. Her work has been published online on The London Magazine, gal-dem and Third Text.
Dedicated to the arts and their power to influence development, Siima has also featured in panel discussions at the Film Africa and ourselves + others: african feminist re-CREATIONS festivals.
She holds a bachelor's degree in International Development and Politics from The University of Manchester. In 2015, Siima completed her master's degree in African Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. Siima is also a co-founder of Tom-bebe-sa, an archival project that creatively engages with African and Caribbean diasporas.
NATHAN KWEKU JOHN
Nathan Kweku John is a first-year MFA poet at the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program. His transnational West African upbringing heavily influences his aesthetic, as he endeavors to uncover poetic connections across diasporic time and space. He is a recent winner of Furious Flower’s 2020 poetry contest and has work published and forthcoming in Obsidian, V Magazine, and 4 Anthology. Nathan is presently working on his first poetry manuscript entitled Saltwater Demands a Psalm, where he investigates, colonization, black masculinity, black boyhood, and especially, the spiritual consequences of climate change in West Africa. Whenever he isn’t writing, Nathan is probably eating Jollof rice or dancing to Afrobeats.
Instagram: @kwxku_
Twitter: @kwxkuu
BRIONA BUTLER
Briona Butler is a graduate of Grinnell College where, as a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow, she developed research examining the synergy of literature, religion, and gender as evinced through the evolution of Black women’s literary tradition. Furthermore, her scholarship situates this literary tradition as a canon of sacred texts for the ways Black people have historically used it as a tool to negotiate conflict and moreover, achieve self-actualization, a process which one scholar of ritual studies deems, “performing their becoming.” Specifically, her research argues for the concept of ritual production as an apt theoretical framework by which to analyze the particular modalities in which Black female writers have dilineated these complex processes of negotiation and becoming, while simultaneously revealing a unique and particular ethical lens that also reverberates universally.
Instagram: @surrealistma | Twitter: @surrealistma
My name is Ifeatuanya Chiejina, and I am a visual artist from NYC. With each day that passes, I am thankful to be a Nigerian-American artist. I’m constantly coming into the realization that it is up to me to present myself, and bring forth my own happiness. I carry some ideas, thoughts, and truths that are reflective of Nigerian customs and traditions. But I also accept and carry with me truths that aren’t. Conversing with different people opens the door for my beliefs to be questioned. How I best choose to honor myself and speak honestly in those instances, when there is potential for relationships to be formed or broken, really defines who I am as an individual person. Creating portraits and figurative pieces is my way of indicating the importance of knowing thy self.
Instagram: @ify.chi.chiejina
ORIT MOHAMED
Orit Mohamed is a writer and digital media producer based out of the San Francisco Bay Area. Her writing ranges from short stories, to opinion pieces, pop culture critique, and reports on art & music.
Through her video production, Orit facilitates critical conversations by reporting on issues with cultural relevance and humility. Her work examines culture, politics, and society, through a lens rarely found on other media outlets.
Some of her interests include meditation & wellness, discussing the intricacies of the African diaspora, and sharing ideas on how to dismantle oppressive ideologies.
MELANIE GRANT
Melanie Grant is an award-winning Barbadian filmmaker. Her short films have been screened at local, regional and international film festivals and cultural events. Although she considers herself first and foremost an artist she also sees herself as an academic. Her passion for gender and queer studies has shaped her purpose as a filmmaker and she endeavors to use cinema to educate, to advocate for positive social change and to document the stories of women and sexual minorities in the Caribbean. Her most recent films, Pieta and the Book of Jasmine, both address issues affecting the women in the LGBT community in Barbados and explore the intersections of religion and sexuality. Melanie holds a Bachelors degree in Creative Arts and a Masters in Visual Anthropology from the University of Manchester.
YAYRA SUMAH
Yayra Sumah is a doctoral candidate at Columbia University’s department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies (MESAAS). Her research focus is Congolese (DRC) history, violence, healing and religious movements, as well the politics of masculinity and femininity. She also engages with African contemporary art criticism and writes on feminist theory and practice.
FLORIAN BOBIN
Florian Bobin is a student in African history and host of Elimu Podcast. His research focuses on post-colonial liberation struggles from the 1960s and 1970s in Senegal.
Twitter: @flotok
MALCOLM TEFERI SOW
Malcolm Teferi Sow is a Burkinabé-Canadian photographer and visual artist currently based and documenting in Toronto, Canada and previously based in Peckham, London. His current work aims to illuminate the poetic beauties and dynamic histories of the African diaspora by bridging the involution of contemporary black life to sociological inquiry.
Instagram: @malcolmteferi
MICHAEL NUNEZ
Michael is a Garifuna-American freelance writer from Brooklyn, New York. He is particularly interested in the writings of the African-Diasporic subject, primarily taking an iinterest in Caribbean literature. When he is not reading ,he could be found watching film. He is currently conducting research for his first book, which will explore his Garifuna identity.
CALEB PRAH
Caleb Prah is a Ghanaian artist living and working in Kumasi in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. He is interested in images and objects and their relations to human life in the Ghanaian / African context. He uses the camera as a tool in his work among many others. He completed Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology with First class honors in BFA Painting and Sculpture from the Department of Paintings and Sculpture, BlaxTARLINES KUMASI project Space for Contemporary Art. He has participated in two of BlaxTARLINES KUMASI’s trilogy exhibition held in Accra at the Museum of Science and Technology. “Orderly Disorderly” 2017 and “Cornfields in Accra” 2016. He was also part of the exhibition “Memory and Amnesia: In the presence of Absent Futures”2017 held at the KNUST library.
Instagram: @calebprah1
Joseph L. Underwood is an art historian and curator whose research focuses on artists from Africa and how their employment of different artistic platforms (festivals, biennials, exhibitions, etc.) create networks of transnational exchange, from the Modern period to the Contemporary moment. Projects focus on themes related to the Postwar era, including post-colonialism, nationalism, globalization, and biennialism.
www.kent.edu/art/joseph-underwood
Contact: JUnder18@Kent.edu
Lloyd Kofi Foster (b.1990, Washington, DC) is a Ghanaian-American photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. Self-taught, Foster’s work uses personal connections, memories, and authentic perception to capture daily life, combat warped media perspectives, and to better understand his subjects. Foster's works have exhibited at the National Geographic Museum, BWI Airport International Art Gallery, The Textile Museum, Prince George's African American Museum, and IA&A at Hillyer, among other exhibition spaces within the United States.
Foster is currently a graduate student at New York University pursuing an MFA in Studio Art.
Instagram: @_lloydfoster
MILLER BIANUCCI
Miller holds an MSc in African Studies and an MSc in Comparative and International Education from the University of Oxford. and is currently studying Comparative and International Education at the University of Oxford. Her work explores the impact of history, society, and politics on national educational systems and students in East Africa. Miller is engaged in the on-going discourse regarding the decolonisation of knowledge, curriculum development, and educational aspirations in Africa. Her research is concerned with ways in which historical narratives and perspectives of the continent might be reframed through educational reform.
Twitter: @millerebianucci
SANYU MULIRA
Sanyu Mulira is a PhD student in the History Department at NYU with a focus on African Diasporic history in the francophone world. Her research revolves around the militant activism of Caribbean and African women in the mid 20th century. After receiving her MA in African Studies at UCLA in 2014, Mulira was an adjunct professor of Ethnic Studies and French at California State University, Sacramento until 2016. Most recently, Mulira was an visiting lecturer of Global History at the Pratt Institute for the 2017-2018 academic year.
YODITH DAMMLASH
Yodith is a photographer, archivist and editor based in the DC Metropolitan area. Her personal work has been featured in MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora, Format Magazine, The Week: Captured, Photo District News, OkayAfrica, Sally Hemings Dream zine, Nueva Luz Photographic Journal, Rooted In Magazine, East City Art, The Root, MSN and Huffington Post. In December 2016, she was a featured artist in Addis Foto Fest, on of the leading photography festivals in Africa and the world. She most recently exhibited at The African American Museum in Philadelphia and Prince George's African American Museum and Culture in Brentwood, Maryland. Yodith's photo-based work explores her own Ethiopian-American ancestry through the lenses of womanhood and collective memory. She specializes in portrait, documentary, editorial and archival photography.
Instagram: @yodithd