Please check out these two blog posts that I wrote for these websites:
On African Writers Trust:
African Writers Trust and Commonwealth Writers recently organised an Editorial Skills Development Workshop that I was lucky to be a part of. Lucky because one of the facilitators was Ellah Wakatama Allfrey who came along with another Editor, Vimbai Shire. I first met Ellah Allfrey last year at the Granta-Kwani?-British Council Workshop in Nairobi and I was extremely enthralled by how much information she gave us as writers and the questions that she asked that made me look at my work in ways I had never thought of.
Ellah Allfrey is the former Deputy Editor of Granta. Before Granta, she was Senior Editor at Jonathan Cape, Random House. She sits on the board of the Writers’ Centre Norwich, is Deputy Chair of the Council of the Caine Prize and a patron of the new Etisalat Prize for Literature. In 2011, she was on the judging panel of both the David Cohen Prize and the Caine Prize for African Writing. In 2012, she was chair of the fiction panel for the Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. Her journalism has appeared in the Telegraph and the Observer and she is a contributor to the book pages of NPR.
A Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts, Allfrey was awarded an OBE in 2011 for services to the publishing industry.
Allfrey is series editor for Kwani?’s 2013 Manuscript Project. This year, she was the Chair of the judges for the Commonwealth Short story Prize where Ugandan writer, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi emerged winner with her story, Let’s Tell This Story Properly.
Allfrey also edited the Africa39 anthology that will be published in October this year.
On Storymoja:
I did mention here that Sooo Many Stories will be in conversation with other bloggers on the Storymoja Blog as we prepare for The Storymoja Festival. The conversations are as many and as varied as the bloggers. Do check them out.
Founded in 2008, The Storymoja Festival is a five day celebration of stories, ideas, writing and contemporary culture through storytelling, books, live discussion forums, workshops, debates, live performances, competitions, mchongoano and music.
It is organized in collaboration with Storymoja Publishers, the Hay Festivals (UK) and other local and international partners. The Festival, held every year in Nairobi attracts the most exciting local and international writers and thinkers. The Festival promises both engaging and stimulating discussions as well as light-hearted entertainment.The Schools Programme and the Storyhippo Village caters for families and children, as well as teens with programs and interactions that will be remembered for years to come.
I have never been to the festival but the few friends of mine that have been, have made me even more excited to be a part of this.
For my first post, I wrote about how book lovers that are not necessarily writers can be a part of the book-making cycle:
When it comes to a book, it is always the author that is celebrated. The reader is only remembered when that book has to be sold. But I have been thinking of friends of mine that live for books. They read much more widely than I will ever read (I am ashamed to admit), they have strong opinions about books from the covers to the language used to when is a good time to read a Salman Rushdie. They also always recommend to me books that they know I will love remembering that I struggle with Sci-Fi and that I am going through a Caribbean-Black American-African writers phase. Above all, they are very certain that they are not meant to write (trust me, they have been obviously asked why they don’t write the moment their love for books manifests itself). How do such people fit into the cycle of the book where they are more than just readers? How can their passion make them some or even load of money.
Read the rest of it here.
Look out for my interview with Vimbai Shire on her experience as a freelance editor and my other posts on the Storymoja blog.
Thanks a lot for reading!