For decades, there was one path to becoming a successful African writer: Getting a book deal in the publishing meccas of New York, London or Paris. But a radical shift is underway, transforming the region’s literary landscape from within and opening up possibilities unimaginable to previous generations of writers.

It all started more than two decades ago, when the Kwani? literary magazine in Kenya began publishing and connecting African writers under the guidance of the writer and editor Binyavanga Wainaina. Then came publishers like Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, who started Cassava Republic Press in Nigeria and began publishing African fiction and nonfiction and promoting locally the African writers who had gained acclaim in the West.

Now, a robust publishing ecosystem has grown in the region: African writers and their agents are signing deals with African publishing houses. Those publishers are trading book rights and collaborating on everything from translation to the design of book covers. And those books are finding readers through new bookstores, literary magazines and literary festivals that are fostering transnational reading communities and launching regional best sellers.

The shift is growing the range of stories being told about Africa and greatly amplifying the work of African writers, according to interviews with over a dozen African writers, agents, publishers, festival directors and bookstore owners.

“The West is not discovering us. We are discovering us and then telling our stories and then saying to the West, ‘Well, this is us,’” said Zukiswa Wanner, a South African writer whose latest novel, “Love, Marry, Kill,” was published last year by publishers in Nigeria,phl63 gaming South Africa and Kenya, and is being translated into Portuguese for publication in Brazil, too.

The wealth and the variety of new possibilities for African writers were on display last summer during the opening night of the Doek Literary Festival in Namibia’s capital, Windhoek. The biennial festival, founded in 2022, has become one of the most important literary gatherings in Africa. Over four days in August, young poets recited their works, seasoned authors discussed African crime novels, and literary figures from across the continent and the Black diaspora exchanged ideas.

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Overall, violent crime fell 3 percent and property crime fell 2.6 percent in 2023, with burglaries down 7.6 percent and larceny down 4.4 percent. Car thefts, though, continue to be an exception, rising more than 12 percent from the year before.

But the move backfired in a way that few supporters expected. Californians in 2021 actually tossed nearly 50 percent more plastic bags, by weight, than when the law first passed in 2014, according to data from CalRecycle, California’s recycling agency.

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