Today I learned that my book-in-progress — tentatively titled Brain Flavor: A Lyric History of Swahili Hip Hop — has been longlisted for the 2024 Granum Prize. I’m pleased to be in the company of the other longlisters, which includes more than one author whose work I’ve taught before. This book is a stew of political history, personal narrative, translations of lyrics, as well a body of oral history I collected this summer in Dar es Salaam, where I interviewed about thirty pioneering Swahili hip hop artists.

As a bonus, you can hear me read some excerpts next week at the Us&Them Reading Series:

In other news, The Best American Essays 2024 officially comes out a week from today. In the first review, Publishers Weekly named my “formally ambitious” contribution a high point. I am most grateful to editor Wesley Morris for selecting it, and for these kind words in his introduction: “Some of these essays are marvelous experiments in style whose nerve and frankness disarm you. Here, none more so than Richard Prins’s. A single preposition becomes a reply that becomes an after-school punishment that becomes a parental emergency that is also a writer in astounding psychological bloom. Halfway through, I knew he’d pull this off and said aloud, ‘bravo.'”

I can also finally announce – almost exactly a year after it was accepted for publication — that my translation of Katama Mkangi’s novel Walenisi will be published by University of Georgia Press as part of their African Language Literatures in Translation series, edited by Alexander Fyfe and Chris Ouma. Acquiring the rights for the novel was an extensive process, so I am thankful to UGA Press for sticking it out.

I am exhilarated (and more than a bit frightened) to announce that my essay “Because: An Etiology” has been selected for inclusion in The Best American Essays 2024. This essay went through many drafts, different versions, and countless submissions; over the years it received more personalized, “almost” rejections than any other essay I’ve written. So I knew there was something there — and I am especially grateful to Potomac Review for plucking it out of the slush pile! The anthology will be out in October.

Also, as part of their series profiling NEA Translation Fellows, The Center for the Art of Translation asked me a few questions for their blog about translating Walenisi. You can read my answers here!

Finally, my translation of an excerpt of Tom Olali’s experimental Swahili novel The People of Gehenna appears in the latest special issue of Michigan Quarterly Review, guest edited by Chris Abani. You can read and hear a recording of the first few pages of the translation here.

I am excited to announce that the National Endowment For the Arts has awarded me a Translation Fellowship! I am especially honored, because this is the first time the NEA has supported a translation from Swahili – and profoundly grateful that this honor has gone to a text as courageous and speculative as Katama Mkangi’s Africanfuturist novel Walenisi. You can read more about the fellowship here – and read an excerpt from the novel in the collection No Edges: Swahili Stories.

When I started translating Swahili poetry two and a half years ago, I certainly did not anticipate that it would lead me to write an academic paper. But I found the process of translating this particular poem by Muyaka bin Haji al-Ghassaniy so fascinating that I needed another outlet to share everything that happened behind the scenes. You can read the fruit of my agonies “The Dance of the Spinning Top: Translating Resistance in the Poetry of Muyaka” in the new issue of Swahili Forum.

For a much shorter read, I recently had the opportunity to share some thoughts about translating Katama Mkangi’s Africanfuturist Swahili novel Walenisi for Asymptote‘s blog, as part of a new series profiling this year’s PEN/Heim grantees.

And finally, you can read my translation of the first chapter of Walenisi in No Edges: Swahili Stories, the first collection of Swahili fiction to be translated into English. (Publishers Weekly recently called it “a literary feast,” and named my excerpt the “highlight”).

Somehow I have managed to never attend the annual AWP conference – but this Thursday afternoon I will be on a panel “A Universe with No Edges: Swahili Literature in Translation” together with fellow contributors to No Edges: Swahili Stories (Two Lines Press).

No Edges will be the first collection of Swahili fiction published in English translation, and features two of my translations – a fantastical send-up of the horror genre “A Neighbor’s Pot” by my friend Lusajo Mwaikenda Israel (formerly of the seminal Bongo Flava group Daz Nundaz), as well as the first chapter of Katama Mkangi’s Africanfuturist novel Walenisi (for which I recently won a Pen/Heim grant).

So if you’ll be at AWP, I’d love to see you. Or if you don’t know what AWP is (do I? I definitely never figured out what the acronym actually stands for) then you can just order the book!

I will also be presenting at Montgomery College’s Confluence translation conference on March 25 on “Transplanting Poetic Form: Tending the Roots of Swahili Verse”.

Speaking of Swahili verse, two more of my Muyaka translations have appeared recently at Harvard Review Online, and others will appear soon in the upcoming issues of Bennington Review and Washington Square Review.

And finally, a little over a year ago, Spry Literary Journal was kind enough to interview me as a former contributor. I didn’t notice when the interview was posted back in December (possibly because my name somehow mutated into “Richard Prin”).

I am excited to announce that I have been awarded a Pen/Heim Translation Fund grant for my translation-in-progress of the Africanfuturist novel Walenisi by Katama Mkangi.

You can read about the other awardees here.

The judges’ citation reads: “A touchstone of Kenyan literature, Katama Mkangi’s Walenisi begins with a reimagination of events from the dictatorial Kenyatta and Moi regimes. The novel’s protagonist, sentenced to death for “talking too much,” miraculously escapes his fate by piloting the space ship intended as his grave to the utopian planet Walenisi, where a journey of self-discovery begins. Blending parable and science fiction, Mkangi, who was imprisoned for his pro-democracy advocacy, satirizes global capitalism and postcolonial authoritarianism while presenting a speculative vision of an egalitarian future. Richard Prins translates this thrilling ride with humor and verve — a rare chance for English-speakers to read an Africanfuturist work originally written in an indigenous African language.”

On a more personal note, I first read Walenisi about fifteen years ago while studying Swahili as an undergraduate. Though I wasn’t yet fluent in the language, I could easily discern what wild and courageous vision was at play in this novel. I didn’t get around to rereading the novel until I came across a copy in a bookstore in Dar es Salaam last summer. I didn’t even think about translating it, because at that point I was so immersed in Swahili songs and poetry. But through a set of serendipitous circumstances, I wound up translating the first chapter for an anthology of Swahili fiction that will be published by Two Lines Press next year – and now, with the encouragement of this grant, I am hopeful about taking on the rest of the novel.

Meanwhile, back on the poetry front, several of my translations of the 19th century Mombasan poet Muyaka bin Haji al-Ghassaniy have appeared lately, such as “He Shuns Me” in Rattle, “Days of Eating Junk” in Action, Spectacle and “What Would You Do For a Treat?” in Tampa Review.

I translated three Swahili hip-hop songs by my frequent collaborator Sloter and his legendary duo LWP Majitu, and they are up today on the “Translation Tuesdays” feature of Asymptote‘s blog.

No matter what language you’re speaking, hip-hop has been a vehicle for some of the best verse of the last few decades, and Tanzania is no exception. Though I’ve spent much of the last year focused on the classical 19th century poetry of Muyaka bin Haji al-Ghassaniy, I am continually struck by the myriad ways in which LWP echoes his humorous and satirical portraits of daily life, whether it’s 19th century Mombasa or modern day Dar es Salaam.

Several of my translations of Muyaka have also appeared recently – and several more are forthcoming. You can simply click the “Swahili Translation” tab above to continue perusing.

On my last day in Dar es Salaam, while convalescing from a mild case of food poisoning, I recorded this song, shot this music video, and made it to the airport on time. (Now I am back in New York, where I will feel accomplished if I remember to wake up from my afternoon nap). This is my first foray into singeli music, a sped-up spinoff of mchiriku music, which is itself a modern take on the traditional music of the Zaramo people indigenous to the region of Dar es Salaam. I think it’s the hottest stuff coming out of East Africa right now – in fact my daughter can instantly discern an mchiriku beat as “Daddy’s work music” since I rarely listen to anything else while trying to make myself write. If you find yourself digging its frenetic melodies, there are many artists far less gimmicky than myself you should check out!

I just got back from a brief trip to Dar es Salaam, where I was fortunate enough to record two new songs with my frequent collaborator Sloter, from the famed Swahili hip-hop duo LWP Majitu. Here is the video for “Poa”:

We launched the song during an interview on TBC, the national radio broadcast, an excerpt of which can be viewed here:

Recently, I have been devoting the majority of my creative energies towards translating Swahili poetry. The Swahili language is host to a rich poetic tradition dating back to at least the 17th century, but it is rarely translated (and even more rarely translated for literary appreciation rather than academic purposes). My first published translations in nearly a decade just appeared in the spring issue of Exchanges: Journal of Literary Translation, specifically the poems and songs “Cassava From Jang’ombe” by Siti Binti Saad, “Amina” by Shaaban Robert, “It’s No Big Deal To Catch Fish” and “You Might Walk On Land, Hippo” by Muyaka bin Haji al-Ghassaniy, “My Old Dowry Chest” by Abd ai-Rahim Sai’d Muhammad Ba Salim, and “[O tapper of palm wine]” and “The Song of the Trees” by unknown authors. You can also read a note I wrote about the translations.

I also have a pair of translations appearing at the end of the month in Los Angeles Review, one poem by the great 19th century Mombasan poet Muyaka bin Haji al-Ghassaniy (1776 – 1840) and another by the 20th century Tanzanian poet Mathias E. Mnyampala (1917 – 1969). And in the fall I will begin my MFA in literary translation at Queens College. While embarking on a second MFA might make me sound like some sort of walking parody in a hipster sitcom, I am nevertheless very gratified to be doing what I can to bring these works to the attention of English readers.

And while you are reading my translation of this song, do enjoy the legendary Bi Kidude singing “Muhogo wa Jang’ombe”. It was getting this chorus stuck in my head six months ago that kickstarted my recent flurry of translation. At the time this video was recorded, she was the oldest living performer the world.