Muthi Nhlema and Ivor W Hartmann discuss trust, inspiration, writer’s block, and Nhlema’s latest work ‘Piss Corpse’, which was selected to be the debut story for ZamaShort, a new imprint specialising in publishing standalone single short stories by African authors.

• Also read: ‘Keep the mzungu out of trouble’—An excerpt from ‘Piss Corpse’ by Muthi Nhlema, the debut publication from ZamaShort

Ivor W Hartmann: Hi Muthi, welcome to this conversation for The JRB. To start with perhaps you can tell us a little about yourself and what got you into writing?

Muthi Nhlema: By profession, I’m a trained civil engineer who hasn’t really practised by choice. By day, I run a social enterprise called BASEflow, which works on groundwater sustainability in Malawi. It’s technical, structured, full of data and numbers. But when I get tired of all that logic—and when even the faintest whiff of inspiration creeps in—I sit at my computer and try to convince myself that I can write. Not just type. Write.

My love for storytelling actually started when I was ten years old. I watched a movie called Hopscotch, starring the late, great Walter Matthau, who played a CIA agent who gets unceremoniously fired. In retaliation, he starts writing a tell-all memoir, revealing top-secret details with every chapter he publishes and shares with the world of espionage. The CIA, the KGB, Mossad—suddenly everyone wanted him dead. I was obsessed. I must have watched it twice a day at some point. And I remember thinking: How is it possible that words—just words—could cause so much trouble?

And because I was probably a little troublemaker at the time, the idea of writing as a form of mischief appealed to me. Even now, I still write with that little boy in mind—the one who couldn’t believe that a sentence could cause chaos. 

IWH: Heh, I had a similar revelation about the power of my own words a few years later than you. I wrote a very blood-drenched werewolf story for an English assignment (I had just been reading Stephen King) that horrified my teacher enough to have a worried chat with my mother. Of course, my mother was not fazed about it, she knew how much I read and was happy that I was now writing too. But it was a similar seminal moment that words, my words could have a powerful effect on whoever read them.  

That mischievous boy heh, I was one too, I think I hear your younger self coming through in ‘Piss Corpse’, making you laugh at absurd situations that are precisely funny because they are recognisably true. How did you go about constructing the character of Charlotte? I understand at the time of writing you were attending the International Writing Program run by the University of Iowa, and that the character is also from Iowa? 

MN: Yeah, we’ve all had a Stephen King phase. I just haven’t left mine yet [laughs]. I was in Iowa—right at the peak of the Covid pandemic, and just as the Black Lives Matter movement was shaking the American social landscape. It was this charged, unpredictable time, full of introspection and confusion, particularly among white liberals. I was fascinated by how they were responding—not just to the moment, but to history.

For instance, at almost every campus event, before anything began, someone would stand up and solemnly declare that the land we were standing on once belonged to this or that Indigenous tribe. And I remember thinking—what does that actually do? I mean, it sounded nice. It was respectful, in a way. But it also felt like theatre. Surface-level. Like a ritual to absolve guilt, instead of dismantling power. I couldn’t help but imagine what an indigenous person might actually say: ‘Thanks for the shoutout. Now please get off my land.’

That disconnect fascinated me—how good intentions so often end up undermining the very ideals they set out to embody or champion. It wasn’t just about indigenous peoples. It extended to feminism, racial justice, climate activism—the whole spectrum of social justice causes. What I found myself observing, again and again, was the white liberal desire to right historic wrongs, but how that desire often ended up coming across as performative, self-congratulatory, or just plain awkward or cringy. It didn’t feel like it was about the marginalised; it was about them. Their guilt. Their need to be seen doing the right thing. Their need to feel like the good guys in history’s sequel. Their need to be seen as woke. That was the seed from which Charlotte was born.

She came out of that messy reflection, that uncomfortable space of watching well-intentioned people try to change the world while still centering themselves in the story. She’s not a villain, and I don’t think she’s a hero either. But she’s real, rooted in that paradox, in that tension I couldn’t stop thinking about while I was in Iowa. If anything, Charlotte was my way of processing what I was seeing, and trying to put a face, a voice, and a set of contradictions to the white liberal mind as I was encountering it in that fascinating country that feels like it’s being held together with string and duct tape. 

IWH: Sounds like it was a fascinating time to be in the US and observe what was going on first hand, it certainly has informed the story and given your character Charlotte real depth, she’s not just a surface caricature. As you say there is always this great sense of irony at play with the eagerness to be seen doing the right thing, as woke, but rarely following that through with effective action for real change. I think it is difficult for colonial countries like the US, Australia, and so on, to come to terms with how they were built, that their foundations are in some ways rotten and have not been rebuilt in a more equitable way. And these old problems like a deep infection keep on re-surfacing as a result, as we can see in the US right now. 

With the character Mbumba, she is such a great and perfect counterpoint to Charlotte, was she inspired by anyone in particular or perhaps an amalgam?

MN: Is Mbumba based on a real person—yes and no. Like most things in fiction, she’s a mosaic. Her bubbliness, her religiosity, her unapologetic plus-size presence, are borrowed traits from real people who will probably never know how much of themselves ended up in my story. But some things, I had to invent.

Like how she flips her Rs and Ls. That’s me leaning into a Malawian stereotype that I heard all my life. When Malawians turn ‘sorry’ into ‘solly’ it’s not because we are mocking English, it’s just the way we speak.

But what I really wanted with her character—what Mbumba had to do—was serve a narrative purpose. She’s friction. She’s what happens when woke crashes headlong into unbothered. I’ve seen it often happen—white expats come into Malawi carrying every variant of guilt. White guilt, privilege guilt, colonial guilt, guilt guilt. They want to talk, confess, deconstruct. But when they try that with Malawians, it doesn’t always land. We laugh it off, not out of cruelty or indifference, but because we just don’t have that same emotional history. There’s a kind of empathy gap. We’re not being dismissive, we’re just … outside of it. Their trauma isn’t our trauma. Their guilt isn’t our guilt. So, we can’t always meet them in that space. We’re not wired to. 

Mbumba embodies that. Charlotte is trying to fight the patriarchy; Mbumba’s working it to her advantage. Depending on your lived experience, neither one is wrong. And that, precisely that, is what I wanted the story to wrestle with: what happens when one person’s truth is another’s blank stare? That tension—that mismatch—is the point and where the story happens.

IWH: Kafka once said, ‘A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.’ You have mentioned ‘Piss Corpse’ ended a period of writer’s block for you, that must have been a great relief. Could you talk through that experience in a way that might benefit other writers experiencing something similar?

MN: Trust Kafka to capture something truly terrifying. Writer’s block is terrifying. Sitting at a computer, staring at a blinking cursor on a blank screen—knowing you should write but finding nothing there—is its own quiet horror. A kind of personal hell.

I went through a stretch—four, maybe five years—where I didn’t write at all. I told myself it was because of work, school, life. But the truth was, I was scared. Scared the words wouldn’t come. Scared I wasn’t good enough. Scared that I would be found out.

Ironically, getting accepted into the Iowa writing programme only made it worse. It triggered a full-blown impostor syndrome meltdown. I hadn’t written in years and here I was being offered a prestigious residency. I felt like a fraud. Like I hadn’t earned it. Like I didn’t deserve it.

But being away on that residency gave me the space—away from excuses and distractions—to face the blank page, to face my own personal demons. The experience ended up teaching me a lot about myself and a few things that saved my writing:

First, I learned how important a support system is. A close friend gifted me a notebook filled with little post-its—quotes, proverbs, reminders. One of them read: ‘The impostor in your head is just an impostor.’ That meant a lot. Sometimes what you need isn’t encouragement, but someone who understands what writing means to you—and gives you the space to do it. People who believe in your work even when you don’t. That can carry you through the hardest writing days.

Second, know what kind of writer you are—and honour that. For instance, I’m terrible at writing prompts. I once froze completely during a workshop exercise where we were asked to ‘describe a lemon without using the word “lemon”.’ Everyone else thrived. I didn’t. For a long time, I thought that meant I wasn’t a real writer—or even a passable one. But I realised I’m just not that kind of writer. And that’s okay. There are a million writing rules out there, but the only ones that matter are the ones that work for you. Some writers swear by ‘never wait for inspiration’. Respectfully, that doesn’t work for me. And I’ve made peace with that.

My goodness—I met a writer who said she couldn’t write unless she over-ate and felt ashamed of herself afterward. Unusual? Most indubitably, but if it works, it works. Figure out what works for you. Find your own rhythm. And then trust it—even if it doesn’t make sense in the moment.

Third, just write. I know it sounds basic—even boring—but it’s the most honest advice I can give. Don’t wait for the perfect sentence, or the perfect adjective. Perfect is the enemy of good enough. I used to obsess over getting every line right before moving on. That only slowed me down and fed the doubt. Now I let the mess happen first and fix it later.

I used to roll my eyes when writers said things like ‘the story has a life of its own’ or ‘writing is a beast with its own mind’. Honestly, I found it a little pretentious—I still do. But here’s the thing: they were right. South African author Shafinaaz Hassim once put it beautifully: ‘we’re just vessels through which the story has chosen to be birthed’. And when you embrace that, it becomes easier to let go of control and let the story tell itself. And you trust yourself to tell it well.

And I guess that’s what really happened, in a convoluted way. I learnt to trust myself again. By leaning on my support system, honouring the kind of writer I am, and just writing, without trying to be perfect, I got my flow back. And once it came, I was too deep in the story to even notice my writer’s block had left.

It’s not a universal formula. But it’s what worked for me. And, hopefully, some of this might help someone else someday.

IWH: Thank you for that Muthi, some solid advice there. I think what has worked most for me is as you said to just write on the regular, no matter what comes out, stick to a schedule, do the work and the work will find its way. 

What attracted you to submit to ZamaShort out of all the possible venues for a great story like this? ZamaShort for me addresses several issues in one shot. The idea of publishing single short stories as stand-alone works is not new, but building an imprint brand platform for those stories just as one would a magazine or anthology series is less common. The equal sharing of lifetime revenue with the author instead of a one-time flat fee, or token payment (or often nothing but ‘exposure’), is also not new but also less common and perhaps a more equitable way forward for both publisher and author. Making the series digital only covers two things: the impracticality of print publishing and distributing single short stories, and given that smartphone use in Africa is now between 40–90% of the population, reading fiction on a smartphone versus print is something all publishers should be interested in.  

MN: Well, actually, I tried my luck outside Africa first. I submitted the story to a literary magazine abroad and, unsurprisingly, got a rejection. Then I shared the story with a friend of mine who reviews international literature professionally. Her feedback was … illuminating. She told me—her words, not mine—that my story was ‘an equal opportunity offender’. Apparently, she had to snicker quietly while reading it, just so she wouldn’t draw attention to herself. A compliment to my ears. [smiles] 

But the one note she gave that really stuck with me was my story had a specific sense of humour, African humour, and that may not always resonate with a Western audience with certain sensitivities. So, message received: I turned home, to Africa.

That’s when I came across ZamaShort on the African Speculative Fiction Society Facebook page. If I am to be honest, I was drawn by the name, which I thought was cool. Then what also caught my attention was the focus on standalone short stories. Most platforms tuck short stories into anthologies or collections; this is almost an industry standard. But ZamaShort’s model felt different. It offered a spotlight, not a shelf. A chance for the story to stand on its own, to breathe, to be judged (or loved or hated) on its own terms.

It meant a chance for readers to engage with just this one story. To really sit with it. To respond to it, not in comparison to ten others. And yes, the revenue share didn’t hurt either. With or without money, I’ll always write. But getting paid? That’s a cherry on top. Though, let me be clear: it’s the cherry on top of a chocolate cake I’d devour whether there was a cherry involved or not.

So, I took my shot and here we are—a little rejection, a little redirection and a platform that, to me, felt just right. 

IWH: Heh, well, lucky me and ZamaShort that others didn’t snap it up, I was very happy to have ‘Piss Corpse’ as the debut story. Yes, the humour is what drew me in from the get-go, I laughed a lot on first read, and on subsequent. I first came across you and Ekari from the excellent Mombera Rising cli-fi anthology, so you were already on my radar when you submitted a work for ZamaShort. 

So, what now for Muthi Nhlema? Is there anything you’re working on, anything in the publishing pipeline that you can talk about?

MN: I’ve learned not to talk too much about the things I’m working on, especially when it comes to writing. It’s a pattern I’ve noticed in myself; whenever I start describing an idea I’m excited about, I somehow end up never writing it. I don’t know why that happens, but it’s consistent enough that I’ve started to take it seriously.

One clear example is when I went to Iowa. I had this plan to write a story imagining an Africa that had never experienced colonialism or slavery. I didn’t write that story. Instead, I wrote ‘Piss Corpse’. I couldn’t tell you why, it just happened that way. I’ve come to believe that the story that needs to be written will find its way, whether or not I try to steer it.

What I can share is that, right now, I’m revising a short story I actually started and finished while I was still in Iowa. It’s a story about the anxieties that surfaced during the pandemic, something I wrote in the thick of it, when the world went crazy. I just want to go back and clean it up, give it another pass.

I’m also doing some research for another story, but I’m not saying anything about that yet. I’d rather not jinx it into nonexistence.

As for publication, I’m not actively aiming for anything specific right now. Usually, I write first and only start looking for a publishing home afterwards. So, I’m just going with the flow for now, and we’ll see where life takes me.

IWH: Many thanks for this Muthi, this was an engaging conversation, thank you for taking the time to talk with me.

MN: Thank you for having me.