Month: June 2026

CALL FOR ESSAY SUBMISSIONS: WRITING LOSS & GRIEF

Grief and loss are as universal as life and death. They are footnotes punctuating our moments of joy and happiness and love.

From Antigone to Things Fall Apart, from Beloved to An Equal Music, some of the world’s most searing stories have been written from nibs dipped in the ink of loss and grief.

And now, it’s your turn.

Thomas Hardy once wrote that “Happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain.”

I.O Echeruoʼs Debut Novel Is a Dazzling Blend of Science and Spirituality – Sima Essien

But The Comfort of Distant Stars is not exclusively a novel of lofty ideas and grave philosophy. Running beneath the intellectual current is the quiet drama of Ezeani’s troubled life and its constant entanglement with Anyanwu’s contested existence, driving a turbulent dynamic that keeps the novel emotionally tethered. And at the heart of it all lies the state of Ezeaniʼs mind, and Echeruo allows us to sit with the sobering possibility of mental debilitation, of genius misunderstood, dismissed, and finally consumed by its own weight.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS – THE LAGOS REVIEW WRITING WEEKEND

Over 3 days, they will learn how to write compelling and insightful music, book and movie reviews as well as essays. Our facilitators would be led by Ellah Allfrey Wakatama, OBE, Hon. FRSL,  Editor-at-large at Canongate, former deputy editor at Granta, past Booker prize and International Dublin Literary award judge and Chair of the AKO Caine Prize and thelagosreview.ng advisory board.

“The Boy Who Gave” by Allison Precious Emmanuel Understands Sacrifice But Not the System That Demands It – Joseph Jonathan

The wearing of so many creative hats (a legitimate feat for a debut) also produces the film’s most visible seam. There is a tension between Emmanuel, the director, who wants to make something formally ambitious, and Emmanuel the subject, who wants to be fully seen. That tension is never quite resolved, and the film’s bloated runtime reflects it: a story that would benefit from a ruthless external edit, that mistakes length for emotional weight and repetition for depth.