Mwangupili upbeat of Muana reign

Renowned author Ndongolera Mwangupili was recently elected Malawi Union of Academic and Non-Fiction Authors (Muana) president. He leads the association backed by a rich publication profile which has seen him publish a number of books. Our News Analyst BRIAN ITAI caught up with hi, to reflect on the work in leading Muana.

Experts: A. I am a poet, writer, scholar and culturalist. I am the author of Fragments of my Broken Voice, a poetry book; Sons of the Hills, a novel, and A Gift to the People: Sr.

Beatrice Chipeta’s Legacy, a biography. These are some of the books published as I haven’t included the anthologies I have edited. Some of which are used in Malawi secondary school curriculum.

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My works also appear in Southern Humanities Review, Florilege and several other international journals. Other works have been widely anthologised four including in The Caine Prize for African Writing 2024: Midnight in the Morgue and Other Stories and Beneath Humanity: Contemporary Short Stories From Malawi by Acin, just to mention two of several anthologies my works appear in. In 2025, I was awarded the Honorary Fellow in Writing (HFW) by the University of Iowa in the USA after participating in their International Writing Programme (IWP).

I work for the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology as a principal quality assurance officer in the Northern Education Division. This is my public life. In my private life, I am a married man, born in an extended family of Mwangupili Kayira from Mwanjabala Village in Karonga.

For how long have you been in the literary industry? I always consider this a difficult question as it forgets what nurtured me to be who I am as a writer. To begin with, my two villages, paternal and maternal.

Mwanjabala is my paternal home. It is well known for mapenenga ya nkhombo and whenever I went home I would join in the last line to learn to dance mapenenga. Mbiliyaluta Boma is well known dancing group that now it is even invited to national functions.

Kashata is my maternal village. It is well known for saza la mapenenga. My uncles were great dancers and I could join to learn to dance saza.

Now in my father’s house, when aunts (father’s sisters) and uncles (mother’s brothers) came, we always assembled around them in the evening to listen to vidokoni(folktales). We had no TV then in the 1980s. Little did I know this was developing me into a storyteller.

When I started living with my brother in 1990, my sister in-law, a nurse by profession, was a great reader of novels, she still reads. I always read the books she brought in the house. Ludlum was her favourite then.

Then we could go to Kamuzu Institute of Sports in Lilongwe and Chenda Hall in Mzuzu to watch Du Chisiza Junior, Kwathu Drama Group and others. For me to know that I am a writer was when I went to St Patrick’s Seminary to begin Form One. The award ceremony had to come to Mzuzu as the best poem was from Rumphi.

The rector sent me and my classmate Sam Ng’oma [he is a priest now]. The same year a play written by a student went to national finals of ATEM Drama Festival. It was titled Thunderous Consequences.

I became a prolific contributor to newspapers in Malawi. Notable engagement in those early days was my involvement in the Crossingborder Project of the British Council with mentors from the UK. That was in 2004 for six months.

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