Saltwater Cartographers

A serialised fantasy of mapmakers and a vanishing coast

Yaw Boakye-Ansah2 episodes2 min of audio30 playsSerial

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Season 12 episodes

S1 · E2Sep 28, 20261:1016 plays Preview

Chapter Two: The Guild Does Not Take Apprentices

A guild clerk brings Efua to the Cartographers' Hall, where the last three mapmakers argue over whether to teach her. Outside, another stretch of coast begins to forget itself.

S1 · E1Feb 17, 20261:1414 plays Members

Chapter One: The Village That Woke Inland

Efua wakes to find the fishing village of Kokrobite a mile from the sea, with boats on dry sand. At the market she discovers she can remember a shoreline nobody else can.

About the show

Saltwater Cartographers is a serialised fantasy told in 35-minute chapters, released fortnightly, written and narrated by Yaw Boakye-Ansah from Accra. In the port city of Abenase, maps are not drawings. They are made by cartographers who walk the coastline at low tide and remember it so exactly that the land agrees to stay where they put it. Now the coast is forgetting itself: whole fishing villages wake up a mile inland, and the Guild of Cartographers has stopped taking apprentices. Efua, a seventeen-year-old fish seller with a memory for shorelines she was never taught, is about to become the first in a generation. The story draws on West African coastal life, market humour and real Ga and Fante sea lore, with original drumming and sea sound from the Accra shoreline. Chapters follow in order, so begin at the first. It is for listeners who want fantasy with salt on it rather than swords.

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