Stop the Presses, Now the Journalists Have Turned Fiction Writers

Yinka Olatunbosun 

There’s something delightfully renegade about culture journalists deciding to write fiction. It’s a bit like food critics opening a restaurant—or art curators suddenly stepping onto the canvas. Yet with Moonbeam: An Anthology of Short Stories by Nigeria’s Foremost Culture Journalists, the departure is gentle, luminous, and—dare one say—beautifully copy-edited.

Published by the sleekly intrepid Narrative Landscape Press, Moonbeam gathers 15 of Nigeria’s culture journalists—veterans of the country’s arts desks and literary supplements—and places them, somewhat audaciously, at the centre of the creative frame. The result? A gleaming compendium that proves those who chronicle art can, with equal aplomb, become the dramatis personae.

Edited by Anote Ajeluorou, former Arts Editor of The Guardian and publisher of TheArtHubNg, the collection reads like a deft exercise in cultural multitasking. It assembles a formidable cast: Sam Omatseye, chair of The Nation’s editorial board and indefatigable wordsmith; Adeniyi Kunu, radio man of gravitas at Lagos Talk FM; Okechukwu Uwaezuoke, a decade-long former deputy editor (Sunday) and current arts editor at THISDAY; Terh Agbedeh, the editor of thisislagos.ng and lagosreview.ng; and Henry Akubuiro, literary editor of The Sun.

Also orbiting in this creative constellation are Jahman Anikulapo, Toni Kan, Molara Wood, Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, Nehru Odeh, Sumaila Umaisha, Greg Nwakunor, and the ever-musical Akeem Lasisi—proof that Nigeria’s cultural beat reporters have long harboured secret manuscripts alongside their press passes.

And then there is Evelyn Osagie, who dreamed Moonbeam into being but passed on before she could hold a copy in her hands. The book is dedicated to her memory, a fitting tribute to a woman who saw art not as luxury but as oxygen.

At Quramo Festival of Words (QFest 2025) in October, the Eko Hotel ballroom shimmered with the anthology’s debut. A panel on “The Place of Anthologies in a Book Ecosystem” featured contributors trading insights and gentle jabs about the blurred lines between reportage and reverie—a newsroom turned round-table of dreamers.

The anthology’s itinerary now reads like a festival wish list. On November 14, it takes a bow at the Lagos Book and Art Festival (LABAF); on November 19, it resurfaces at the Lagos Fringe Festival, under the exquisitely self-reflective theme “Interrogating the Intersection of Journalism and Creative Storytelling.” After that, Moonbeam will grace Alliance Française and Goethe-Institut, ensuring that even the most cosmopolitan Lagos soirées will have at least one copy glinting on a side table.

Ajeluorou calls the anthology “a victory for culture reporting in Nigeria,” and perhaps he’s right. This, after all, isn’t the first time journalists have moonlighted as novelists—Toni Kan (The Carnivorous City), Akeem Lasisi (Night of My Flight), and Abubakar Adam Ibrahim (When We Were Fireflies) have long danced between both worlds—but Moonbeam is something rarer: a collective declaration that those who chronicle creativity might also embody imagination.

The stories hum with the same energy that propels a newsroom past midnight—sharp-eyed, unsentimental, yet tinged with tenderness. They slip easily from satire to soul, as though the writers couldn’t quite decide whether they were filing copy or making confession.

In an age when the boundary between critic and artist has never been thinner, Moonbeam feels both timely and inevitable—a reminder that culture journalism, at its best, is itself an act of imagination. And sometimes, even reporters need a little moonlight of their own.