Namwali Serpell is from Zambia. She is an assistant professor in English at the University of California, Berkeley. She has written for Bidoun. Her story “Muzungu,” originally published in Callaloo, was included in The Best American Short Stories 2009.

• May 2010: A Sunburst Above a Receding Road
  What happens when, pronouncing the names of Nabokov’s characters, they leave the page and end up in your mouth?