Best of Isele Anthology

Best of Isele Anthology is a wide-ranging anthology that gathers some of the most memorable work first published in Isele Magazine, bringing together short stories, essays, and poems that center African and diasporic lives. Each piece stands alone, yet recurring concerns—love, loss, justice, the body, and the idea of home—echo across the collection. Spanning late- 20th- and 21st-century settings, the pieces move from a village in Akpulu haunted by pythons and forbidden love, to London and Lagos, Nairobi and Phoenix, Oklahoma and Vermont. Pieces are arranged to move across places and voices, creating a conversation between village myth and contemporary urban life, Africa and the diaspora, and intimate domestic scenes and public protest. Together, they trace how ordinary people—lovers, mothers, teachers, activists, migrants, queer characters, and children—live through grief, desire, injustice, and the search for home. Featuring a broad range of writers, emerging and established, from Nigeria, Somalia, Kenya, South Africa, the United States, and the wider African diaspora, Best of Isele Anthology possesses a range of voice and form rooted in specificity, emotional depth, and political and social insight.