Omenana 10th Anniversary Edition December 2024

Omenana 10th Anniversary Editorial

Running with the dream

I joined Omenana in 2019, when the magazine was in its fifth year, and the first issue I edited was issue 13. Another five years have rolled by since then, and here we are at issue 30, still running with the dream that was nurtured to fruition by Chinelo Onwualu and Chiagozie Fred Nwonwu, who is better known in the speculative fiction world as Mazi Nwonwu.

These two visionaries have said that when they published the first edition of Omenana, they weren’t quite sure where the magazine would take them. However, as Mazi puts it, they were sure they wanted Omenana to be a home for writers of speculative fiction and they wanted the writers ‘to be from a community that had not seen much leeway in the world’s speculative fiction community – Africans and the African diaspora.’

In the ten years of our existence, Omenana has had the honour of publishing some great, established and budding writers. Some of my favourite moments of editing Omenana include publishing a writer whose work had never been published elsewhere – or only a few publication credits, and shortly after, watch them get nominated for, and even win a much-coveted prize. Another joy I cannot get enough of is the chance to read and edit some of the most riveting and creative stories before we share them with you, our readers. We are proud to have been the platform for the discovery of some of Africa’s speculative fiction stars – in this way we are consistently pumping the gas to keep Chinelo and Mazi’s dream alive.

In addition to our treasured writers, we have also had some memorable collaborations such as the French stories which were edited by Mame Dienne over the course of several years; a special democracy issue done in collaboration with the National Democracy Institute (NDI); a special African Futures edition sponsored by Goethe Institut; a South African edition which was guest edited by Wole Talabi, Mohale Mashigo and Gail Jamieson; and most recently, we worked with a professor and students in a school in Brazil to produce a Portuguese translation issue of specific Omenana stories. We look forward to many more collaborations and partnerships as we forge ahead.

We have maintained the tradition of offering a token honorarium to each of our contributors , even as the magazine remains free. Some people might call the latter a foolhardy choice, but we remain committed to enabling access to our readers in Africa. A lot of the magazine’s running cost is handled out of pocket, while some percentage is borne by our donors. We remain grateful to our regular donors – the ones who contribute to our Patreon account, and the few others who sometimes show their love for our work by offering to pay for specific issues. In the past decade, we received some funding support from Goethe Institut, The Science Fiction Writers Association of America and NDI America. Also, we won’t fail to acknowledge the writers who say ‘please use my contributors fee to publish one more new voice!’, or those who say ‘please send my prize money to Omenana’. These are the backbone of the magazine and have helped keep us afloat.

Over the years, the stories we published have been shortlisted for several awards and won some. Omenana Magazine won the 2023 Utopian Award for our Issue 22 — Positive Visions of Democracy. One of the stories from the issue, Neyllo by Naomi Eselojor, won the best Utopian short story. The art for Neyllo by Jema Bymugisha won the best Utopian art.

In recent years, we have had a few team members who have come on board to volunteer or intern as editorial assistants, social media content managers, and more. Damilare Williams-Shires, Uche Nwonwu, Chinaza Eziaghighala, your contributions are immeasurable. Our in-house artist Sunny Efemena is still with us, and we love how his art is evolving along with the magazine’s decision to keep AI out of our illustrations. Godson Chukwuemeka Okeiyi, our graphic designer, is also still flying with the Omenana dream, as are the rest of us: Mazi Nwonwu, our founder and managing editor, and yours truly, Iquo DianaAbasi.

In this issue, we are honoured to have stories from some of our previously published writers who decided to grace our pages one more time as we celebrate our tenth anniversary. From sci-fi to magic realism to fantasy and fairytale, these stories are as much a celebration of African speculative fiction as they are a toast to Omenana at ten.

Thank you, dear readers, for an amazing ten years. We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t have you!

Let’s raise our glasses and give 10 happy cheers to Omenana on our first decade! And I’ll be the first to bid you welcome to our second decade and beyond!