Join award-winning author Mubanga Kalimamukwento discussing her novel, The Shipikisha Club with her dear friend, a flâneur and headstrong historian, Gloria Mwaniga Odary. 

The Shipkisha Club follows Sali, a working mother of three who is  on trial for the murder of her husband Kasunga. The prosecutor says she shot him after a heated fight in their bedroom, but there are no witnesses and Sali pleads not guilty. 

Sali's trial becomes a national scandal and draws a cast of witnesses – including the maid, Kasunga'a mother and Sali's 15 year-old daughter, Ntashe – who each have their own version of the woman, the marriage and what happened behind closed doors. 

But whose story will the court believe, and most importantly, whose side will you be on? Join the discussion at the launch. 

Mubanga Kalimamukwento is the author of four books and one chapbook. She was the first Zambian winner of the Jacana Literary Foundation’s Dinaane Debut Fiction Prize for The Mourning Bird. She additionally was the first African winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize. She has also received support from the Fulbright Program, the Africa Institute, the Hawkinson Scholarship for Peace and Justice and the Miles Morland Scholarship for African writers. 

Gloria Mwaniga Odary’s collection of stories, The Saxophonist from Mombasa, was a finalist for the 2026 AWP Grace Paley Award for Short Fiction. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Transition, Adi, Isele, CRAFT, Lolwe, and elsewhere. Odary, who likes to think of herself as a flâneur and a headstrong historian, is fascinated by historical revisionism and the intersection between research and imagination. She has an MFA from the University of Memphis. 

The Shipikisha Club is available on the Jacana Media website, Amazon Kindle and all good bookstores. 

The Shipikisha Club online book launch