Every generation inherits stories.

Some are written in books. Others are carried in memory. Some arrive as poems whispered across kitchen tables or songs sung before dawn. Others live in praise poetry, in proverbs, in letters folded into drawers, in manuscripts that crossed oceans, and in languages that refuse to disappear.

Long before we called it literature, Africa was already telling stories.

That is where this issue begins.

Written Legacy is our fifteenth issue, and perhaps our quietest. Not because it has less to say, but because it asks us to listen more carefully. To the voices that came before us. To the writers reshaping the continent today. And to the conversations still waiting to be had.

For too long, African literature has been spoken about as though it were one thing. One shelf in a bookshop. One genre. One history. But there has never been a single African literary tradition. There have always been many. Stories carried by griots and imbongi. Love letters and liberation poetry. Oral epics, children's tales, speculative futures, crime novels, philosophy, satire, romance and remembrance. Together, they form something far greater than a canon.

They form a living archive.

Across this issue, we travel through that archive. We explore the relationship between language and identity, asking what changes when a story moves from one tongue to another. We return to oral traditions, not as relics of the past, but as enduring ways of preserving knowledge. We celebrate writers who have shaped generations, while making space for those whose voices are only just beginning to be heard.

At the heart of the issue is our conversation with Chigozie Obioma. His work reminds us that writing is never simply about putting words on a page. It is about carrying forward lived experiences, holding contradiction and imagining futures. Leaving something behind that might outlive us.

Perhaps that is what literature has always done. It reminds us that we are part of a conversation much older than ourselves.

That every story we inherit asks something of us. To remember. To question. To add our own voice before passing it on. Written Legacy is our invitation into that conversation.

Not because it is complete. But because it is still being written. One day, someone will inherit the stories we choose to leave behind. Written Legacy is our contribution to that inheritance.

Every generation inherits stories. Every generation leaves stories behind. Order your copy of Issue 15: Written Legacy, available in English & Arabic, and become part of that legacy.