One World Website

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Why One World?

Thoughts from some team members:

"When writer Ovo Adagha asked me to join this group, based in part I believe by his reading my poetry @ Zoetrope, I welcomed the opportunity thinking I would get to share my work with a diverse group of writers. At the time I could not imagine that our efforts on the project "One World" would grow exponentially in scope, brilliance, purpose and importance.

All writers endeavor to touch readers with their stories. And the stories in One World achieve this and much more, because we members belong to an international community, sharing common values, impressions, talents and beliefs, but also--and equally as important--establishing our unique ethnic presence.

More than the stories, which are valuable, is the value each of us brings to the anthology as diverse individuals. Not as so-called Third World writers but as writers of One World: united in diversity and ethnicity.

What could be more important?"

- Martin Ramos

The Joy of the Internet

This project was possible thanks to the Internet.


This from one team member, Sequoia Nagamatsu:

"not only the content and nature of this anthology is unique, but also how it came into existence--entirely online, bringing together writers thousands of miles apart together to create something that brings the world a little closer.

The anthology not only sheds light on the third world and indigenous communities but also demonstrates the fluid nature of political and geographic borders via Internet communication and transnational discourse."



Twenty-One writers. One World.

One World: The Writers

Molara Wood won the John La Rose Memorial Short Story Competition (2008); and received a Highly Commended Story Award from the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association in 2007. She is a former columnist for The Guardian on Sunday, Lagos; a former reviews editor for the Sentinel Poetry Quarterly; and a contributor to the BBC Africa Beyond website. Her essays, reviews and short fiction have appeared in publications including: Sable Litmag, In Posse Review, Drumvoices Revue, Humanitas, Chimurenga, Farafina, Per Contra and African-Writing. Work is forthcoming in several anthologies. Molara Wood was born in Nigeria and currently lives in London, England.

Lauri Kubuitsile lives in Botswana. Her short stories have appeared in New Contrast, Drum Magazine, Mslexia, Author Africa, African Writing and Arabesques Review among others. ‘The Rich People’s School’ appeared in Mslexia’s Children’s Voices issue. Lauri has twice won short story prizes from the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association. Her children’s book, Mmele and the Magic Bones, was short-listed for this year’s African Writers’ Prize. In 2007, she took first position in Southern Africa’s most lucrative writing contest, the 13th BTA/AngloPlatinum Short Story Contest. In 2007, she was also awarded first prize in Botswana’s Ministry of Youth and Culture’s Orange Botswerere Artist of the Year Awards for Creative Writing. She has two published novellas in her Detective Kate Gomolemo series, The Fatal Payout (Macmillan 2005) and Murder for Profit (Pentagon 2008).

Martin A.Ramos is a writer of short stories and poetry from Hormigueros, PR.
He grew up and was educated in Chicago, IL, has a master's in TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) and currently works as an Auxiliary Administrator for the Dept. of Education in his hometown of Hormigueros. He has published stories in small literary mags such as Chiricú (Indiana University) and Latino Stuff Review, and poetry in Dragonfly, Rattle, Latino Stuff Review, Cyclo*Flame, and Writer’s Digest. His poems have appeared online at Red River Review and the Cortland Review. He considers it an honor to form part of such an important anthology as The One World.


Skye Brannon is an American living in Dallas, Texas. She has written two novels, a play, many poems, and several short stories. However, she is particularly excited about her story in the ‘One World’ anthology, a collection of stories that is both socially enlightening and fantastic reading.






Jude Dibia was born in Lagos, Nigeria and raised along with four other brothers. He attended the University of Ibadan where he founded the campus magazine 'WHAT?'. In 1999 his novella 'Full Cycle' was published. After bagging a degree in Modern European Languages (majoring in German) he worked with Lufthansa German airlines as a reservations agent. He later joined Virgin Atlantic Airways where he held various middle management positions. In 2005 his first full length novel 'Walking With Shadows' was published. Walking With Shadows caused some controversy due to Jude's liberal look at homosexuality in a West African country. Unbridled, Jude's second novel was released in Nigeria in 2007 and won the Ken Saro-Wiwa prize for prose. Jude continues to work in the aviation sector as a project development manager and is working on various book projects.

Petina Gappah is a Zimbabwean writer who lives in Geneva where she works as a lawyer. Her short fiction and essays have been published in journals and anthologies in Germany, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States and Zimbabwe. She is the first winner of Zimbabwe’s Mukuyu Nyaya national story competition and was runner-up in the HSBC/SA PEN literary contest judged by JM Coetzee. She is currently completing her first novel and researching for a biography of the Bhundu Boys, the first Zimbabwean musicians to achieve international renown.

Ivan Gabriel Rehorek is currently an inhabitant of the planet Earth....such as it is. He lives in a noisy inner suburb, with one wife, two children, a small white dog, several saxophones, guitars and violins, books, paintings and mosaics. On clear, moonlit nights, they can all hear the lions roaring from the nearby zoo.

Chika Unigwe was born in Enugu, Nigeria, and now lives in Turnhout, Belgium, with her husband and four children.
She holds a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and an MA from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. She also holds a PhD from the University of Leiden, The Netherlands, having completed a thesis entitled "In the shadow of Ala. Igbo women writing as an act of righting" in 2004.
Chika Unigwe is the author of fiction, poetry, articles and educational material. She won the 2003 BBC Short Story Competition for her story "Borrowed Smile", a Commonwealth Short Story Award for "Weathered Smiles" and a Flemish literary prize for "De Smaak van Sneeuw", her first short story written in Dutch. "The Secret", another of her short pieces, was nominated for the 2004 Caine Prize. Moreover, her short story "Dreams" was shortlisted for the Million Writers Best Online Fiction in 2005, and "Thinking of Angel" was longlisted for the same award. Her story "Confetti, Glitter and Ash" recently finished third in the 2005 Equiano Prize for Fiction.
Chika Unigwe's stories have been broadcast on BBC World Service, Radio Nigeria, and other Commonwealth Radio Stations.
Her first novel, De Feniks, was published in Dutch by Meulenhoff / Manteau in September 2005; it is the first book of fiction written by a Flemish author of African origin. The story, set in Turnhout, explores themes such as grief, illness and loneliness, subjects already touched upon in Unigwe’s earlier work. By featuring a central character who shares the novelist’s Afro-European background, the narrative also exposes some shortcomings of Belgian society, like its pervasive unwelcoming atmosphere and the superficiality of many of its inhabitants.
Her second novel, Fat Morgana, a tale of choices and displacement, set against the backdrop of the Antwerp prostitution scene, was recently published.

Ravi Mangla is a writer living in Fairport, New York. He has fiction forthcoming this month in Eclectica and Johnny America Online. And like every other writer in the world, is at work on a novel.

Vanessa Gebbie is a writer, teacher and editor living in the UK.
Since her first short story was accepted for publication in 2004, Vanessa’s work has appeared in print in the UK, USA, Canada, New Zealand, India and Ireland. Her stories have also been published in many online literary journals, translated into Italian and Vietnamese, broadcast on BBC radio and distributed on London Underground.
Her novel-in-progress won a first prize in The Daily Telegraph Novel Competition, 2007. Other successes include winning second prizes in two major short story competitions in the same year: Bridport and Fish, 2007.
Vanessa teaches Creative Writing in schools and adult workshops. She has worked with addicts in rehabilitation facilities and with other marginalised adults. Her work has led to the publication of anthologies of writing by the homeless, refugees and asylum seekers.
She is founder and editor of Tom’s Voice Magazine www.tomsvoicemagazine.com , an ezine dedicated to writing by those whose lives have been touched by addiction.
Many of Vanessa Gebbie’s award winning stories have been brought together for the first time by Salt Publishing of Cambridge, UK, in her debut collection, Words from a Glass Bubble (March 2008).
Kettle on the Boat has the following credits to its name:
• Highly Commended Award, Writers Inc. London Writer of the Year Competition, 2006
• Shortlisted, Fish International Short Story Competition 2006
• First published in the author's debut collection of short fiction Words from a Glass Bubble (Salt Publishing, 2008)

Dipita Kwa is a writer resident in Cameroon. He has been published in a number of literary journals like KenAgain, Crossing Borders, and Authorme. His novel ‘Time and Seasons’ was also published by Authorme.

Lucinda Nelson Dhavan first came to India on a Fulbright Grant, and decided to stay. After working for several years for a local newspaper, she has turned to writing fiction. Her stories have appeared in Gargoyle, Sweet Fancy Moses, and on line in Carve and The Paumanok Review, among others.

Adetokunbo Abiola is a prize winning Nigerian journalist and writer. He has published a novel Labulabu Mask (Macmillans Nigeria) and short stories and poems in BBC Focus on Africa, The Rake Journal, Flask Review, Zapata Review, Lib Lit and Sage of Consciousness. Has a story coming up shortly on Big Pulp.


Shabnam Nadiya is a short story writer, poet, editor and translator based in Bangladesh. Her fiction explores the isolation individuals face because of boundaries of class, gender, race, age and religion; her poetry is the map in negotiating the pathways through her anger and her wonder.

Her work has appeared/is forthcoming in a number of anthologies and periodicals including A Stranger Among Us: Stories of Cross Cultural Collision and Connection, ed. Stacy Bierlein (Other Voices Books/University Press of Illinois), In Pursuit of the Perfect Gourmet Garam Masala, ed. Daithidh MacEochaidh (Skrev Press, UK), Galpa: Short Stories by Women from Bangladesh, ed. Niaz Zaman and Firdous Azim (Saqi Books, UK), Arshilata: Women’s Fiction from India and Bangladesh, ed. Niaz Zaman (writers.ink, Bangladesh), Gulf Coast, Arsenic Lobster, Planet, Eclectica, Nethra, World View, Bonfire, Words Without Borders, etc. Nadiya received third prize at the Torrevieja Another Look Short Story Contest 2006 (Spain) and Honourable Mention at the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize 2007 (USA).

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in 1977 in Enugu, Nigeria. She studied medicine and pharmacy at the University of Nigeria then moved to the US to study communications and political science at Eastern Connecticut State University. She gained an MA in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.
After initially writing poetry and one play, For Love of Biafra (1998), she had several short stories published in literary journals, winning various competition prizes. Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus, was published in 2003 and is set in the political turmoil of 1990s Nigeria, the narrative told from the perspective of 15-year-old Kambili Achike. This book won the 2005 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best Book), and was shortlisted for the 2004 Orange Prize for Fiction.
Her second novel is Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), set before and during the Biafran War. It won the 2007 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction.
Chimamanda lives between Nigeria and the US, and is currently working on a third novel.


Ken Kamoche was born in Kenya and currently resides in the UK. His short stories have appeared in magazines/journals like Wasafiri, Ambit, Kunapipi, Author-Me, and in a number of anthologies, includingDreams, Miracles and Jazz (Picador, Africa, 2008). His
debut collection of short stories, A Fragile Hope(Salt Publishing, 2007) made the Frank O'Connor Long list (2007), and in 2008 was shortlisted for the Commonwealth First Book Award. One of the stories in the collection, 'A glimpse of life' won second prize in the Olaudah Equiano Prize for African Fiction in 2007.

Elaine Chiew lives in London, England with her husband and two children. She was a corporate securities lawyer before becoming a full-time mother and writer. Her work has appeared in Juked, Edifice Wrecked, The Summerset Review and In Posse Review, among others. She has work forthcoming in Alimentum, Better Non Sequitur’s anthology, See You Next Tuesday 2 and Dzanc Books’ Best of the Web 2007 anthology. A recent story (In Posse Review) was a Top Ten Notable Story in Storysouth’s Million Writer’s Award, 2006. “Leng Lui is for Pretty Lady” was first published in Storyglossia, Issue 27, March 2008 and was a Top 25 Finalist in the Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers in 2005.

Sequoia Nagamatsu is a playwright and fiction writer originally from the San Francisco Bay Area and the Pacific Northwest of America. He was educated at Grinnell College, Iowa where he majored in Anthropology. While directing his own interdisciplinary work in San Francisco, he helped produce and manage the San Francisco International Arts Festival, the San Francisco Theatre Festival and several other performances. He is most interested in the emerging forms of electronic creative writing including hypertext and literary video art. He is currently working on a collection of short stories and a novel and resides in Niigata City, Japan where he teaches English. He has fiction forthcoming this summer at Underground Voices, Static Movement and Elimae. 

Wadzanai Mhute was born and raised in Zimbabwe. Though she now resides in the United States, her home will always be Zimbabwe. She has been writing for a number of years now but having graduated with a Computer Science degree she realized that writing would always be her number one passion. Her articles have been published in the Philadelphia Weekly, MethodX and Mimi Magazine. One of her short stories "Autumn in Zimbabwe" was published in the summer issue of Per Contra Magazine.

Ovo Adagha is a poet and fiction writer from Nigeria.
He works as a literary journalist on the Art page of the Nigerian Vanguard.
His short stories and poems have appeared in several online journals and print anthologies -the most recent of which is the Author Africa 2008 anthology. He lives in Enugu, where he is currently working on his debut novel.

INTRODUCING THE PROJECT

The One World Project is the brainchild of Nigerian journalist Ovo Adagha. Working on the writing forum Zoetrope, he created a workspace and invited writers from all over the world to participate in creating an anthology of short fiction.

Why? Because he wanted a team from many cultures, many 'worlds', to explore Third World issues through fiction. So thanks to the Internet, writers came together to work.

One of the first things we did was to throw out the term 'Third World'. We felt it was belittling. We felt it was a label attached by the West to developing countries struggling to overcome the negative residues of white colonialism. Inherent in the term is arrogance, it is patronising. There to preserve a careful distance.

We wanted the project name to encapsulate what we were trying to do, coming together, working together, pulling down barriers.

So the project soon took on the name 'ONE WORLD'

All the writers started to write pieces of short fiction to illustrate their feelings, the issues they wanted to explore. And soon, the files filled up with whole worlds. Characters started to speak, telling their stories of hardship, of fragility, of deprivation, of strength, of beauty and of hope.


There are many prizewinning writers in the team. The stories are varied in style, all very strong, and are bound together by a strong undercurrent.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Half of a Yellow Sun...)is supporting the venture and has contributed a story.

Thanks to the unfailingly good humoured and courteous refereeing of Ovo, and the extraordinary commitment and energy of the team the finished MS is now being considered by several publishing houses.

Please watch this space for further updates.

And do friend us on myspace One World Myspace Profile

And Facebook - Search for One World in Groups.



The group:

Molara Wood (Nigeria)
Lauri Kubuitsile (Botswana)
Martin A Ramos (Puerto Rico)
Skye Brennon (USA)
Jude Dibia (Nigeria)
Pettina Gappah (Zimbabwe)
Ivan Gabriel Rehorek (Australia)
Chika Unigwe (Nigeria)
Ravi Mangla (USA)
Vanessa Gebbie (Britain)
Emmanual Kwa Dipita (Cameroon)
Lucinda Nelson Dhavan (India)
Adetokunbo Gbenga Abiola (Nigeria)
Shabnam Nadiya (Bangladesh)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria)
Ken Kamoche (Kenya)
Elaine Chiew (Malaysia)
Sequoia Nagamatsu (USA)
Wadzanai Mhute (Zimbabwe)
Ovo Adagha (Nigeria)


Molara Wood can be found HERE
Lauri Kubuitsile can be found HERE
Jude Dibia can be found HERE
Petina Gappah can be found HERE
Chika Unigwe can be found HERE
Vanessa Gebbie can be found HERE
CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE can be found HERE AND HERE
Ken Kamoche can be found HERE
Elaine Chiew can be found HERE
Elaine Chiew can be found HERE
Ovo Adagha can be found HERE
Adetokunbo Gbenga Abiola can be found HERE