AMUNA WAGNER

Hi! I am a writer, journalist, and educator based between Cologne and Cairo.

I am the co-founder and Editor-In-Chief of Kandaka, a website that imagines feminist futures at the intersection of art, pleasure, and activism. I am also OkayAfrica‘s North Africa Correspondent.

I studied International Relations and Arabic at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, with a special interest in decolonising processes and the politics of gender, and am currently pursuing an MFA in Literary Writing at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne.

My work is an invitation to widen our collective horizons through solution-oriented, accessible media. I am passionate about storytelling that de-centres and challenges harmful narratives and mirrors the world in its intriguing complexity.

I regularly facilitate creative writing workshops. My creative writing practice and teaching place a special importance on the awareness that we are all actors driving social change, and that our words have the power to influence and reshape language and mindsets. Taking responsibility for what we write and how we write it, de-centring ourselves and our assumptions, and instead approaching the world with open mindfulness, is the key to accessing the beauty and power which lie within us all in our daily practice and conversations.

My work has been published or is forthcoming on Internazionale, GQ Middle East, OkayAfrica, Project Myopia, Africa Is a Country, The Floor Mag, The Africa Journal, The Pan African Music Magazine, Amaka Studio, Egyptian Streets, Skin Deep, Rowayat, midnight & indigo, Meeting of Minds, shado mag, Rosa Mag and sweetthangzine.

I was selected for the Tin House Autumn Workshop (2025) and as Writer in Residence at Burg Hülshoff – Center for Literature in Münster (2025), invited to perform at auftakt festival Cologne (2025; 2023), awarded the Tejumola Olaniyan Fellowship at The Africa Institute in Sharjah (2023), and selected as Writer in Residence at the Library Of Africa and The African Diaspora (LOATAD) in Ghana (2021).

I have spoken about Black German histories, intersectional feminisms, and anti-racist work at Amazon, Hudara, die Regisseur*innen, Klubkomm, and Schule ohne Rassismus – Schule mit Courage. My journalistic work was highlighted on Semafor and on New Wave Magazine’s Writer’s Block.

I currently serve as an advisory member on the board of the literary journal Rowayat.