Kwani Trust

Queer Africa Reader: Discussion paper & call for abstracts.

Dear Friends

We are writing to invite you to participate in the publication of an African LGBTI / Queer Reader [The Reader] to be published by Pambazuka Press in June 2011. The Reader is being published in response to the increasing homophobia and transphobia across the continent which aims to silence the voices of African Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender and Intersex people. Read the story »

Call for Submissions: CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN WOMEN’S POETRY

Across the continent as well as in the African Diaspora, African women are well
known for their word craft. Over the centuries, African women have accomplished
difficult feats using a capacity for words that is only surpassed by their
ability for physical labor. This project on Contemporary African Women’s Poetry
is looking for submission of poems written by African women from all works of
life. Read the story »

CALL FOR PAPERS for The Nairobi Journal of Literature

CALL FOR PAPERS for The Nairobi Journal of Literature

The Nairobi Journal of Literature is a peer reviewed journal based in the Department of Literature, University of Nairobi. The editorial team invites contributions for The Nairobi Journal of Literature in its 7th issue to be published in October 2010. Read the story »

Kwani? Online - Mis-Appreciation of African Literature’

In ‘Mis-Appreciation of African Literature’ (101), David Kaiza argues that fights over the reading African literature ought to concern us in Africa only as a curiosity; we have, for good and for worse, inherited a body of work already. It is not our place to doubt what is ours. He adds that we who would continue creating art and literature on the continent ought to concern ourselves with technical questions to start the kind of reading which should have been done years ago; to say if a book is written well or badly, to compare what we experience inside the pages and compare them to what we experience outside of them.Read the full article here.

CIRCA 1969: THE DEATH OF THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

In this second and last part of his letter to Philip Ochieng, Taban lo Liyong decries the poor quality of the African – and particularly East African - creative writing that seemed to emerge after the creation of the Department of African Literature. It is a sombre reflection on what Taban sees as a continuing lack of seriousness on the part of writers on the continent and region whom he says, do not read widely enough, do not strive hard enough to understand the religions, languages and traditions from around the world that would inform deeper literature. Read the full article here.