Ms. Afropolitan blog founder Minna Salami has a new talk online from TEDxBrixton. We were virtual friends for a long time before I finally met her, last year, at a mutual writer friend's house party in Lagos.

She is every bit as engaging in person as in print, and even more critically insightful in this talk. I am proud to know her and to be a fellow African feminist. It is the best F-word in the dictionary. --AL.

"I continued to see representations of African women that did not reflect the reality of the women in my family or my friends or my colleagues. It became clear to me that rather than the complex reality of what it means to be an African woman, the media was saturated with one-dimensional portrayals of African womanhood. And I identified three major stereotypes--which I call the struggler, the survivor, and the stereotype empowered African woman." -- Minna Salami, Ms. Afropolitan

myne whitman and AL @ the garden city literary festival
met the world famous myne whitman, blogger and author, at the GCLF this week. she moderated two panel discussions, one on the impact of social media on the publishing industry, and a "meet the author" session with acclaimed writers helon habila, zainab jallo and adaobi tricia nwaubani.

throughout the festival, myne showed herself to be a smart, savvy and outspoken writer/blogger. i admired the tenacity with which she utilized the web to market her self-published work, a heart to mend. she read books, articles, and blogs on social media, and grew her audience of subscribers from 1 to 400.

a handful of folks have asked why i don't publicize this blog more than i do. i certainly have read tons about how to do that, but i suppose a part of me has never fully embraced the online sphere, will always see it as a somewhat fickle enterprise. but if it were a dollars and cents matter, ie, publicizing my blog was equivalent to selling books, i'm sure i could muster the motivation.

at any rate, bought a copy of her book and can't wait to dig in. naija bloggers unite! --AL.