Waywords Studio
Wanderings on Literature and Language
Waywords
our studio
“Language is power, life and the instrument of culture, the instrument of domination and liberation.”
Angela Carter
Waywords produces a web of programs and media designed to improve our thinking in democratic action, in critical literacy, in global understanding. We provoke, inspire, and wrestle with the ambiguities and richness of human thinking, from times modern to ancient.
While offering serious educational support for those who want it, Waywords entertains and engages with surprising takes on a wide range of global topics, from Western social trends to modern mythological thinking.
Criticism & Reviews
The Waywords podcasts and blog explore the workings of global literatures, language, and mythology through a social-epistemic rhetoric. Book reviews explore a wide range of genre, era, and region.
Fiction & Verse
Original prose includes verse, short fiction, work from the ImageMaker cosmogony, the Sam & Nadi English learners series, published collections like Unwoven, and audio drama.
Teaching & Learning
Programs to support students in lifelong literacy training, Advanced Placement® Literature, IB® Theory of Knowledge, philosophy, composition and critical reading, and English language learning.
Words from Nigeria 3 – Emezi’s Pet & Hunters for Truth
Akwaeke Emezi demonstrates how Nigeria's contemporary writers turn our conceptual realities around. They offer a YA novel that doesn't condescend, but more, one which shows that we should not "walk away" from Omelas, but perhaps "Stay and Hunt." This is...
Words from Nigeria Pt 2: Soyinka’s Tiger & Brother Jero
Why have so few read Soyinka? And can we find hope through his cynical dramas? I admit I am a victim of the myth-making around me which has made Soyinka and other African writers largely invisible. Let's see why. Episode 6.24 - Words from Nigeria Pt 2:...
Everything but
A good day, he decided. A shift, a movement. He could not possibly predict now who he would become, only that watching his thumb press across that stray glop of Gillette and thus reveal a little more blue in the vanity countertop . . . exhilarated.
Words from Nigeria Pt 1: Adichie and the Literary Manifesto
What sort of literature is this, anyway? Today we introduce some approaches to Nigerian literature, offer a bevy of African writers, and explore how one of Nigeria's most powerful authors can write her own modest letter to humanity. Also, we learn...
Nursery Rhyme for 5-Year-Olds
“London Bridge” and “Ring Around the Rosie” had their day, too.
Cassandra: Uncertain Steps
And what if nobody listens? Yes, entering our calls for justice into public space carries no small amount of anxiety. And the poster-child for being unheard, the Trojan princess and priestess Cassandra, may--if we read our mythology...
(no poetry here)
An image. An act.
Without comment.
Writing Back: Letters to Humanity
26 Dec 2025 Episode 6.21 - Writing Back: Letters to Humanity A different sort of New Year Resolution, moving us from personal improvement to public advocacy! Let's write an essay of address, framing our passions into a perspective that would make...
The Great Societies: Lowry’s “The Giver”
19 Dec 2025 Episode 6.20 - The Great Societies: Lowry's The Giver Another thorny utopia, Lowry's Community practices a different kind of strategy to the Hideous Bargain: ethical evasion, a too tempting strategy for all of us. Political? Yes. But...
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