2016 was a great year for The Bagus NG as a blog as it started as an idea nursed and nurtured by a bibliophilic lawyer seeking to make a difference and ending with not one but additional new team members – Yvonne who joined us as an adjunct unpaid staff from Accra, Kike Muchachos (who joined a s a reviewer of some of Africa’s finest books. On a medical leave for now but would resume shortly) TheBattosai™ (A Japanese pen name for a new lawyer who is serving us her ‘Battosai’ review of African literature for the blog), Buchi Onyegbule (reviewer and OAP, WE FM, Abuja) Henry Okelue (Brand Manager, Strategist, Photographer per excellence and all-round lover of the arts @4eyedmonk who from time to time would regale us with tales of independent publishing in Nigeria and beyond) and the last but not least Ijeoma, who without her passion and foresight wouldn’t have gotten The Bagus NG this far.
So, looking back at 2016 and how other blogs analysed top trends and events , we felt it a moral duty to you to do a highlight of our first year and put out our hopes for 2017. 2016 was the year of many firsts for The Bagus NG as a blog even though most of our goals were not stated down in a journal but we decided to go out on a limb and push the awareness of literature to the farthest places in Africa and we hope to do more of that in 2017.
2016 was also the year we were supposed to attend the inaugural edition of the Abantu Festival but that didn’t quite pan out but are grateful for the amazing people we have connected with and also the amazingly massive support and encouragement we have received so far and for this we will forever be thankful to 2016. It’s given us the opportunity to do much more than we ever thought possible but this is just a starting point.
2016 is also the year we discovered some amazing blogs and literary publications too numerous to mention and even though we haven’t met the owners in persons, we see and appreciate what you are doing.
We are super-psyched for 2017. We are going to be more, give more, but most importantly make a huge impact. We have high hopes for 2017 which include;
- Hopefully get more writers and reviewers on board(preferably volunteer until we can afford to pay you. Thank you in advance). We are open to new voices joining the BM train. This is an open invitation!
- Have a Bestsellers List of Books in different categories with a target on African books
- More features of African authors in far-flung regions like North and South Africa
- Two seperate lists of Our Top Nigerian Poets of 2016 and African Poets Who Inspire Us To Be Better. Watch out for that soon!
- A special feature of some of Africa’s finest poets on their #PoetryStory coming soon in February
- Possibly attend Writivism this year and numerous other literary festivals around Africa and the world. If only these embassy gods would smile on us this year. Fingers crossed.
- Have our second edition of our September special dedication to poetry – SE”POET”EMBER
- Dedicate the months of April and May to hearing the stories of some bloggers, writers and publishers.
- Read more books. Good books. Minimum of 4 for each team member every month starting from January 2017. Lol
- Do more of our ‘In Memoriam’ and ‘Author/Poets of the Month’ features
These are a few of the blog’s goals. The others would come soon enough…
We are already 6 days into 2017, let put the remaining 299 to “booktacular” use!
Happy Booktiful 2017 from all of us at BM!
What are you looking forward to in 2017?