Ivana Akotowaa Ofori ('Introducing Anansi') is a Ghanaian storyteller. She is a weaver of words in many forms, including fiction, non-fiction and spoken-word poetry. A 2023 alumna of the Clarion West Six-Week Writing Workshop, Akotowaa has been nominated and shortlisted for various awards, including the Miles Morland Writing Fellowship and the Nommo Awards. Her work has appeared in anthologies such as Tor.com’s Africa Risen (2022), and Clinamen Editions’ Daring Shifts (2023) and in online magazines such as Jalada Africa and AFREADA. Her debut novella, The Year of Return was published in 2024 by Android Press. She lives in Accra, Ghana.

Emily Zobel Marshall (Foreword) is a Professor of Postcolonial Literature at Leeds Beckett University. She is of French-Caribbean and British heritage and grew up in the mountains of Snowdonia in North Wales. An expert on the trickster figure in the folklore, oral cultures and literature of the African Diaspora, she has published widely in these fields, including her books Anansi’s Journey: A Story of Jamaican Cultural Resistance (2012, UWI press) and American Trickster: Trauma Tradition and Brer Rabbit (2019, Rowman and Littlefield). She develops her creative work alongside her academic writing and her collection Bath of Herbs was published by Peepal Tree Press in 2023.