ZamaShort #12 ‘Did You get Married to Her when I was in the Mental Hospital?’ by Abigail George

Award-winning poet Abigail George takes you on a vivid contemporary odyssey in the poetic form of a prose poetry collection through psychological landscapes of her inner and outer world. In living with a diagnosed bipolar condition, George burns star bright and black-hole dark, but her writing has always remained, sustained, and mattered, giving us this rare eloquent and vital insight.

 

Abigail George is a poet, essayist, novelist, blogger, editor, playwright, and short story writer. She was the awarded the 2023 Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Prize for her poem, ‘In a Lonely Search for Walt Whitman and Chris Abani’, nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and twice nominated for Best of the Net Award. Her latest book is Songs For Palestine: Struggle Poems. She blogs at African Renaissance and Mentally Sound.

 

“Oh, God, what amazing poetry this is! I love every single poem and every single word. Every poem walks you in a corridor that leads into the author’s subconscious spaces, revealing a shadowy world of bitterness, broken love and fragmented thoughts. With the influence of the author’s bipolar condition and a family plagued by cancer and lack of love and unity, Abigail is able to produce a narrative poetry that utilises raw and deep-cutting images, fragmented stories and half-asleep-and-half-awake musings and reflections to weave a body of poetry that leaves the reader dazed, mouth-gaping and gasping for more.”

— Dr Christopher Okemwa, Senior Lecturer, Kisii University, Kenya.

 

“A lyrical, stream-of-consciousness dive into the writer’s experience of love, loss, hope and despair. It is a dive that stretches from her bedroom, to her community, to Palestine. The self and the world, past and present, are in contest. But from that contest comes the beauty of the book's poetry. And that's what it really is - poetry.”

— Kevin Goddard.

 

“Abigail’s writing is a treat, rich in imagery and metaphor. She crafts the kind of sentences you wish to bookmark and return to. In this short story, the chapters are offered up in splinters that read like captivating prose poems, often mirroring the protagonist’s fractured psyche, while creating an authentic visceral experience of the complex emotional landscape unfolding within.”

— Adiela Akoo, South African Poet & Author.

 

“A raw, emotional journey through heartbreak and longing. With visceral imagery that explores the pain of lost love, weaving themes of memory, grief, and self-discovery. George writes unflinchingly on the effects of mental illness on family dynamics, and the fragility of the human psyche. Navigating breakdowns, relationships, and the struggle for self-love. Set against the backdrop of societal expectations and personal trauma, this is a testament to resilience and the healing power of creativity. A powerful work that will resonate with readers who have known darkness and the struggle to find light.”

— Thobeka Kenene.

 

“A brave, claustrophobic, and ultimately transcendent piece of literature. It is a “lullaby” for the broken and a manifesto for the power of the written word. Abigail George proves once again that for the marginalised and the “mad”, writing is not just a career—it is a holy act of reclamation.”

— Henry Lombard.

 

“A haunting and deeply confessional work, Abigail George’s poetry moves through memory, illness, and longing with lyrical intensity. What emerges is a fragile yet courageous portrait of a mind searching for love, meaning, and survival in the aftermath of emotional devastation.”

— Tuoyo Palmer, poet and educator.

 

“South African writer Abigail George discovers kinship with the griefs of the broader world while processing her life through streams of consciousness. Mental health and wellness become recurring themes in the work, rendered effectively through the raw, nonlinear poetry that echoes her thoughts.”

— Cristina Deptula.

  

“Writing about one’s life is challenging in the inevitable revelation of deep-seated secrets. Abigail George has no compunction in the sheer honesty with which she integrates her compassion for Gaza and Palestine with her own desperately yet joyously wretched experiences. [This] compliments her inspiring previously published, Songs for Palestine: Struggle Poems. Inspired by great literary figures who shared her condition, she moves between the state of the world as reflected in Gaza and her state as two-year old, teenager, young and midlife adult and her futile search for love and her forlorn fear of abandonment. She ultimately finds companionship in her readership, despite her assertion that she doesn’t write for the world but for herself. In this story, she achieves both as she exchanges a mental institution for the armchair from which she writes with fearless freedom in easy-going words, if in complex metaphors.”

— Doreen Musson, author and freelance social researcher.

 

“Abigail's voice cuts deep into the veins of memory and relapse. A razor-sharp confession from the Eastern Cape fog—addiction, madness, Gaza mirrored in one woman's shattered mirror. No pretty lies here; just the cold mineral water of truth served alone.” 

— Ayanda Billie.

 

Released 1^st April 2026.

 

Available Here:

 

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The ZamaShort imprint series is solely focused on the amazing powerhouse that is the short story. We give each short story its own publication so that it may be read and enjoyed fully as a stand-alone publication. As per the StoryTime Publishing mandate initialised in 2007, ZamaShort continues to champion and add to the ever-growing canon of African literature excellence and diversity.

ZamaShort #11 ‘Gold-Plated Boy’ by Hussani Abdulrahim

Mama Blessing, a struggling buka road-side restaurant owner, is promised riches by the diviner Mallam Idi if she acquires a gold-plated android boy. This—a seemingly impossible task given the fortune it will cost—sets Mama Blessing down a path that will irrevocably change her, and her family’s, life.

“Abdulrahim is a writer of rare imaginative force. In ‘Gold-Plated Boy’, he unites technology, ambition, envy, oppression, and human frailty into a tale as dazzling as it is unsettling. His storytelling is original. He reminds us that the most astonishing machinery is still the human imagination, and in his hands, it is limitless.” — Nana Sule, author of Not So Terrible People.

Hussani Abdulrahim is a Nigerian writer. He has a degree in Pure Chemistry from Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto. Hussani’s short story ‘Arewa Boys’, which won the Toyin Falola Prize (2022), was shortlisted for the 2024 ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award. He won the 2023 Writivism Short Story Prize, Ibua Journal’s 2023 Bold Call, and the 2016 Green Author Prize. He has been longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, Afritondo Prize, Boston Review’s Aura Estrada Short Fiction Contest, and the BWR Summer Fiction Contest. He was a participant in the Flame Tree Writers’ Workshop co-facilitated by award-winning writers Abubakar Adam Ibrahim and Chika Unigwe in 2024. He also participated in the 2025 Kokonut Head Media Virtual Residency Programme. Hussani’s work has appeared in Boston Review, Wilted Pages, Ubwali Literary Magazine, Tasteful: A Literary Cannibal Anthology, Brave New Weird Anthology (Tenebrous Press), Brittle Paper, Evergreen Review, Solarpunk, Ibua Journal, The Flametree Project, and Afritondo Prize anthologies. He lives in Kano, Nigeria, and is working on both a novel and a short story collection.

Released 1st March 2026.

‘Gold-Plated Boy’ is Available Here:

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The ZamaShort imprint series is solely focused on the amazing powerhouse that is the short story. We give each short story its own publication so that it may be read and enjoyed fully as a stand-alone publication. As per the StoryTime Publishing mandate initialised in 2007, ZamaShort continues to champion and add to the ever-growing canon of African literature excellence and diversity.

 

 

ZamaShort #10 ‘Vibrating Particles’ by Daniel Joe

When a writer is dragged out of self-imposed isolation by his boisterous friend a chance encounter with a great lost love explodes his whole world. Memories and suppressed hurts well up but also a new fragile flame is ignited. Can they settle the past, reforge a path, and re-write their future together?

Daniel Joe is an emerging African writer based in Lagos, Nigeria. He is an English Lit. undergraduate at the Iconic Open University, and once a fellow at the SprinNG literary fellowship. His work has been published in several literary magazines and anthologies, including The Poetry Journal's Her Father's Daughter, Brittle Paper, Afritondo, The Rising Phoenix and more. When he isn't writing or reading, he spends his time playing, or watching football, or scouring Lagos on foot searching for inspiration.

Released 1st February 2026.

‘Vibrating Particles’ is Available Here: 

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The ZamaShort imprint series is solely focused on the amazing powerhouse that is the short story. We give each short story its own publication so that it may be read and enjoyed fully as a stand-alone publication. As per the StoryTime Publishing mandate initialised in 2007, ZamaShort continues to champion and add to the ever-growing canon of African literature excellence and diversity.

 

EXCERPT 

THE CLARITY OF ICE

CARMELO RAFALÀ 

I.

I gripped the interface with heated disgust. Synapses were breaking down, some were shifting their pulse rhythms, others were stuck in flux; millions upon millions of nanos were running around, clueless, as if zapped by a heavy dose of the stupids.
   I couldn’t understand it: the rooting into the surrounding ecosystem had been flawless, the bio-programmers for Beta habitat integrated into the surroundings and coaxed by their artificial programmers to grow perfect, natural habitats, enclosed and self-sufficient. It had been a textbook performance.
   Then why are you collapsing? I chided the static-ridden threshold. Why?
   I writhed in my seat in the control bubble of the landing bug and seethed at the decay of my systems control ganglia. My program buoy shuddered. Algorithms manifested themselves and scattered past me like so many dead leaves on a Veronian wind. The massive tangle of information before me struck a discordant note.
   From the command shuttle in orbit, Cruz des-Manas, senior bio-farmer and planetfall coordinator on this seeding run, was overseeing cross-checks on the System Platform’s induction flow and stabilisation subroutines. I saw her in the digiscape distance. She appeared as an octopus whose many tentacles flickered about at what looked like a swarm of large black flies. Beta was collapsing in upon itself.
   ‘Systems are shutting down all over,’ I said.
   ‘Yeah, so tell me something new,’ she shot back.
   ‘Bitch!’ I muttered between my teeth; ears loaded with the system’s incoherent babbling.
   ‘Keep your eyes open, Karlyn. I suspect this may cause the nodules’ systems to panic and self-isolate.’
   ‘Shit, now my program buoy is sinking.’ I had sent out for a pattern trace to find the culprit but all I got was a whole lot of nothing.
‘Organiform supports are dying,’ Cruz announced, an edge in her voice. ‘Just as I suspected, the system’s grids for the nodules have locked themselves tight. The seeding protocol has shut down. At least the final coding sequence for the nodules hasn’t started.’
   ‘I’m cutting contact with Beta. The feedback is damaging our own systems.’
   As I prepared to invoke the nanocrobe buffers to coat and isolate the undamaged programmers, a lightning crack ruptured the digisky. Beta Platform, whose garbled doublespeak dominated most of my channels, howled and discharged a static burst.
   With quick efficiency, my biolastic suit’s response mode kicked in. A silver screen went up, caught the burst, amplified it, and sent it right back at the Platform. There was a shower of blue-white particles, a wrenching noise that threatened to shatter my ears, and I was thrown clear. The digivisor on my interface pulled back like melting plastic and withered.
   I sat in my organiform chair, head aching, and cursed Beta’s bloody haemoglobular flow.
   ‘Total systems shutdown,’ said Cruz. ‘We’re dead here.’
   I noticed my suit was peeling; the heat from the breakdown burning my skin. I managed to pull it off. It crinkled up on the floor and turned from metallic grey to deep black.
   ‘The overload burst got through to my buoy, Cruz, and disintegrated my interface suit. I got fucking fried.’
   ‘We need a full systems check,’ she said.
   ‘I’m fine, thanks for asking.’ I sat back down, careful of my burns. Not exactly the response I was looking for. But then, what did I expect? I grunted (intolerable little shit!) and wondered what the hell I ever saw in her.
   ‘Any damage to the bug?’ she said. ‘I can’t get a full connection to the lander. A few of my ancillary systems are down.’
   I checked the lander’s readouts. ‘Affected systems have automatically rerouted themselves, except aspects of my life support. I got air and pressure, but the heating is minimal, so it’ll get cold in here tonight. At least this thing can still fly.’ I grabbed a tube of gel from the first aid kit under the seat and rubbed it on my burns. ‘But it’s not the bug I’m worried about.’
   Were the colonists for the drop unharmed? It had taken over sixteen system fly-bys to find a suitable host-planet this time, one with enough of a vibrant eco-system from which our nanos could grow the living habitats, like the reconstruction couch reinforces my body’s bone structure for work, groundside. It was the longest gap between seeding runs we had experienced for years. Naturally, when the sample drone returned with a positive result, we were all eager to get to work.
   How had I ended up with Cruz on this assignment? We didn’t get to choose who we worked with, of course. The rota was the rota.
   ‘The organiform nodules could be undamaged,’ she said. ‘No way of telling unless you can re-open their control grids. We won’t get authorisation to save the stock if we can’t verify its authenticity.’
   Cruz had never lost human stock before. Not ever. Never lost a Platform, for that matter. She had an innate ability for biotech, a natural talent. She had even improved upon some of the coding for the Platforms. She was the best, a shining star among those like us, the few who made it Above.
   As far as my situation was concerned, it was my final assignment before being promoted to senior farmer and planetfall coordinator. I would be Cruz’s equal. I had worked hard all my life, made sacrifices, done everything required of me. I had made it to where I needed to be, done what Mother Moira had failed to do.
   Through the viewport the surroundings became hazy in the winter’s evening light; frost formed quickly over the viewport, a thin, crisp sheen of ice. The effect warped the view outside, and things appeared milky, distant and unclear.
   ‘Whatever happened,’ she added, ‘must be very specific if it can take down the entire Platform and make the control grids go into lockdown. We’ll need to be meticulous when going through the data. Luckily, all information up until the incident is secured.’
   ‘Technical errors don’t cause the type of problems we’ve just experienced,’ I said. ‘Not to this degree. Not like this.’
   ‘Well, it seems we’ve got a new kind of technical problem. Unless you got any other ideas?’
   I looked at Cruz through the vid-cam. She looked at me and furrowed her brows.
   ‘What?’ she said. ‘Sabotage?’
   ‘It’s possible.’ I knew it was a long shot. The farming systems were under such tight surveillance, and the programmers kept changing and rotating and upgrading the fail-safes two, three times a day. It was harder to sneak around, hitching rides on the many undercurrents of the Ring Ship’s systems, than it used to be. But that was the only explanation I could come up with at the time.
   ‘A contaminant?’
   I shrugged. ‘Someone must’ve dropped a bomb on us. It’s the only thing that makes sense.’
   She scowled and shook her head. ‘If a person was good enough to get past all the security and plant their poison to spoil the coding, then they’d be good enough to cover their tracks.’
   ‘Possibly. Every system has a weakness, Cruz. Every movement leaves residue, somewhere.’
   ‘But would it be enough to lead the Ring’s security programmers to the source? Even if they managed to track someone down to a section within the Ring, well, it’s a mighty big ship to not have precise coordinates to zero in on a saboteur.’
   Our ship was a massive, spinning ring, nine-hundred and forty kilometres in diameter, connected by spokes to a central hub and drive system. A lot of territory for the authorities to comb over. Not impossible, just difficult.
   ‘If you’re right,’ she said. ‘If it was a saboteur, our best bet from here is to focus on a contaminant, which will leave traces behind.’
   ‘What if the saboteur had insider assistance?’ I said, excited she would even entertain my idea. ‘A contact on the security team. That’s an area to pursue.’
   An alarm howled and died.
   ‘Shit! Can’t pursue anything at the moment,’ Cruz said. ‘Long-range comms link just went down. We’re cut off from the Ring.’
   ‘Cut off?’
   ‘Yes, cut off,’ she barked. ‘That’s not so difficult to understand, is it?’
   I could just make out a tinge of panic at the back of her throat. ‘How much do they know about what happened?’ I asked.
   ‘Enough to know we’re dead in the water.’
   Another alarm. The image became grainy and then cleared.
   ‘A few more systems are gone,’ she said. ‘Just lost the long-range data beams and there’s a flutter in the main drive system.’
   Shit was going from disaster to full-on nightmare.

<...>

“Carmelo Rafalà has deservedly made a name for himself in genre short-fiction over the last few years. ‘The Clarity of Ice’ paints in a few deft strokes a complex world, a fraught history, an unfair society, and a complicated friendship. The language of the story is at once lyrical and alien, and yet Rafalà is a benevolent teacher and guide, trusting us to follow and recognise what he asks us to see. This is skilful storytelling.” — Donna Scott.

“Carmelo is a real talent. Here, he brings us a bleeding-edge story of biotech in a gripping thriller of far-future planetary colonization. But, even more than that, he explores the nature of society and what drives us. An excellent story.” — Gustavo Bondoni.

“Intriguing and original, this tale features a surprising amount of detail and world-building. Despite being a short story, the window through which we glimpse the world of the story is well realised. The prose is excellent, the characters feel real and the challenges they face have modern day parallels that make the story relatable and compelling. This is science fiction that is heavy on the science but the details come across as informed and believable. Overall, a very enjoyable read.” — Tej Turner.

Carmelo Rafalà, a child of Sicilian immigrants, travelled the world and somehow managed to finish his MA in Comparative English Literature at the University of South Africa. His stories have been published in various anthologies and cross genres, from science fiction to gothic horror. His fiction has been praised by such outlets as The LA Review of Books, SF Revu, and BlackNerdProblems. He is a 2024 SFFSA Nova Award winner for his story, ‘The Stars Must Wait’.  A collection of his fiction will be released later in 2025. His novella, The Madness of Pursuit, was published by Guardbridge Books. He currently resides on the south coast of England.

Released: 1st August 2025.

Full Story Available Here:

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The ZamaShort imprint series is solely focused on the amazing powerhouse that is the short story. We give each short story its own publication so that it may be read and enjoyed fully as a stand-alone publication. As per the StoryTime Publishing mandate initialised in 2007, ZamaShort continues to champion and add to the ever-growing canon of African literature excellence and diversity.

 

Massive congrats to Carmelo Rafalà on the British Science Fiction Association Awards 2026 nomination for 'The Clarity of ICE' ZamaShort #4.

ZamaShort #4 'The Clarity of Ice' by Carmelo Rafalà

In a remote solar system, a routine planet human-seeding run has gone terribly wrong. Racing against the clock, before their mothership leaves the system and strands them, two bio-farmers Karlyn and Cruz must solve their dilemmas. They are not only battling with incomprehensible system errors and time, but also with unresolved personal issues and the long shadow of their inequitable upbringing. Failure is not an option.

“Carmelo is a real talent. Here, he brings us a bleeding-edge story of biotech in a gripping thriller of far-future planetary colonization. But, even more than that, he explores the nature of society and what drives us. An excellent story.” — Gustavo Bondoni.

“Intriguing and original, this tale features a surprising amount of detail and world-building. Despite being a short story, the window through which we glimpse the world of the story is well realised. The prose is excellent, the characters feel real and the challenges they face have modern day parallels that make the story relatable and compelling. This is science fiction that is heavy on the science but the details come across as informed and believable. Overall, a very enjoyable read.” — Tej Turner.

Carmelo Rafalà, a child of Sicilian immigrants, travelled the world and somehow managed to finish his MA in Comparative English Literature at the University of South Africa. His stories have been published in various anthologies and cross genres, from science fiction to gothic horror. His fiction has been praised by such outlets as The LA Review of Books, SF Revu, and BlackNerdProblems. He is a 2024 SFFSA Nova Award winner for his story, ‘The Stars Must Wait’.  A collection of his fiction will be released later in 2025. His novella, The Madness of Pursuit, was published by Guardbridge Books. He currently resides on the south coast of England.

Released: 1st August 2025.

Get it here:
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The ZamaShort imprint series is solely focused on the amazing powerhouse that is the short story. We give each short story its own publication so that it may be read and enjoyed fully as a stand-alone publication. As per the StoryTime Publishing mandate initialised in 2007, ZamaShort continues to champion and add to the ever-growing canon of African literature excellence and diversity.

 

 

ZamaShort #9 ‘Everyone is a Robot until Proven Otherwise’ by Bongani Sibanda

By the year 2099 robots had become an intractable part of South African society until a dire warning of a robots’ rebellion is issued by AndroidsWatch. In the resulting mad scramble, Operation Shanela, headed by General Dube, is tasked with finding and removing all robots. Until the fateful day when Dube himself somehow tests positive for being a robot. On the run, doubting his own humanity, seeing conspiracies everywhere, Dube must try and save the world and himself.

Bongani Sibanda is a novelist and short story writer based in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is the author of the collection of short stories, Grace and Other Stories (Weaver Press, 2016), and the children’s fantasy novels, Jimmy and the Giant Insects and The Goat that Refused to be Slaughtered. He has published short stories in magazines and literary journals such as Munyori, Lolwe, Kalahari Review, and many others. In 2018, he attended the Caine Prize workshop held in Gisenyi Rwanda, where he wrote the story ‘Ngozi’, which was published in the Caine Prize anthology, Redemption Song and Other Stories. In 2015, he was longlisted for the Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize for his story ‘Musoke’, a fictionalised account of the Ugandan rebel, Dominic Ongwen.

Released 1st Jan 2026.

Available Here:

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The ZamaShort imprint series is solely focused on the amazing powerhouse that is the short story. We give each short story its own publication so that it may be read and enjoyed fully as a stand-alone publication. As per the StoryTime Publishing mandate initialised in 2007, ZamaShort continues to champion and add to the ever-growing canon of African literature excellence and diversity.

 

It has been a great start for the ZamaShort imprint with eight excellent works published this year. It was an honour and privilege to partner with these fantastic authors who made this year so amazing.

For your consideration:

ZamaShort #1 'Piss Corpse' by Muthi Nhlema
1st May 2025
Contemporary Fiction
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F1VC85R6

ZamaShort #2 'Summer' by Nerine Dorman
1st June 2025
Science Fiction 
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F9LCNRKV

ZamaShort #3 'The Last and Final Battle' by Zainab Omaki 
1st July 2025
Fantasy
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FDQZGCBZ

ZamaShort #4 'The Clarity of Ice' by Carmelo Rafalà
1st August 2025
Science Fiction
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FJFJHQK4

ZamaShort #5 'The Smell of Rain' by Libby Young
1st September 2025
Science Fiction
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FN4LY7D2

ZamaShort #6 'Sindi Fair' by Dare Segun Falowo 
1st October 2025
Fantasy
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0FRY5H31R

ZamaShort #7 'When Two Sorcerers Collide' by T.L. Huchu
31st October 2025
Fantasy
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FX2KBC5Z

ZamaShort #8 'The Offertory' by Tabitha Wanja Mwangi
1st Dec 2025
Contemporary Fiction
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G35VGX5V

And that's a wrap for this year! Next year is on the brew with more excellent works lined up and more developments in the pipeline.