Do the tyrants care for the generation?

Abdi Rizak Basal Osman

During my childhood time, one morning my mother took me to a farm where my father was working. It really shocked me when we found my father had been slaughtered on the farm. My mother wept helplessly but it was amazement and frustration for me.

After growing up in the refugees, I decided to write something about the pain which a fatherless person passes and what it can lead to, to the upcoming generation and the entire population.

But because poor and harsh times in the refugees have failed me to write, though I still think of it and decide to write one day and present for the Somali people who are killing themselves, and making the families to fall apart, causing the loved ones to die, while the generations suffer in the big towns without education and alike.

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Happening Now

  • Jennifer Feeley’s translation of Tongueless, Lau Yee-wa’s thriller sketching Hong Kong’s slide toward linguistic totalitarianism, is forthcoming from Feminist Press.

  • In addition to becoming the Berlin LitFest’s first curator-in-residence, Helon Habila has also just received Kaduna Books and Art Festival’s KabaFest Lifetime Achievement Award, celebrating his "exceptional writing and significant contributions to the development of literature globally."

  • Congratulations to Enah Johnscott, whose film Half Heaven won three awards at the Cameroon International Film Festival—best film, best director, and best cinematographer.

  • We regret the passing, on April 11, 2024, of the distinguished Romanian author and critic Dan Cristea, who served as the editor in chief of the Luceafărul de Dimineață cultural monthly. In addition to being an alum of the 1985 Fall Residency, Cristea received his PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Iowa.

  • Our congratulations to 1986 Fall Residency writer Kwame Dawes, who has been named the new poet laureate of Jamaica.

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