CCC Press Kenya Anthology – Meet and Greet Session this Thursday! CCC Press Kenya Anthology – Meet and Greet Session this Thursday! CCC Press Kenya Anthology – Meet and Greet Session- Thursday 23

You do want to get published, don’t you?

Storymoja is pleased to invite you to an informational session and cocktail party to meet a UK editor compiling an anthology of Kenyan short stories.

Dr. Emma Dawson of CCC Press has edited Cameroon and Nigerian anthologies in the series so far. She is now working on the Kenyan and Ugandan ones, and is planning to have them published by the end of the year. See the publisher’s website for more details.

As part of the compilation process, Dr. Dawson travels to the country in question to meet with potential contributors and listen to what they have to say about their writing. At the session, she gives a brief overview of the Press and the idea behind the anthology series. Don’t miss this chance to meet her and find out more.

WHEN: Thursday 23rd April, 5-7pm

WHERE: Storymoja Offices, Spring Valley, Nairobi

(We are located right behind the Spring Valley Shopping Center (with a Caltex Station) off Lower Kabete Road. Call 0722-838-161)

Please RSVP ASAP and confirm your attendance.

Submission Guidelines For Short Stories.

* Word count: 3000 – 8000 words.
* There is no theme, only ‘Kenya’.

* This is adult fiction (in the sense that it is not ‘children’s fiction’).
* The work must be written in English from the outset, no translation work and it must be written from Kenya (this is not a collection of diaspora writing).
* The story must be ‘new’ in the sense that it is ‘unpublished in book form’ – this makes life much easier in terms of ‘rights’. (We can accept submissions which have been previously published in magazines.)

* Please send submissions by email to worldlits@googlemail.com, attached as a WORD doc. or by post to the CCC Press address (see website) as a typescript (no handwritten scripts please).

Please follow these guidelines:

Name of author (Times New Roman 12 Bold left justified)
Contact address, telephone number and email (Times New Roman 12 Bold left justified)

Title of short story (Times New Roman 14, bold, centered)

The story should be in Times New Roman, black, size 12, justified, 1.5 line spacing. World Englishes literature, World Englishes literature, World Englishes literature, World

Page numbers and name of author on every page please.

Word count at the end of the story, bold and left justified.

If your story is chosen for the publication, we will ask you to provide a few sentences about yourself and your work (around 200 words).

Invitation To Goethe/Kwani Discussion On PEV

Kwani Trust in conjunction with Goethe Institute invites you to a discussion titled :

Memory And Conflict: The Role Of Artists, Image And Text

Date: Thursday, 16th April 2009
Time: 6 PM
Venue: Goethe Institute

The discussion is part of the activities leading to the launch of Kwani? 5, Part 2:Revelation and Conversation.

Part 2 of Kwani? 5, the second 400 pages of a twin edition, starts off where the 1st volume ends, to further examine Kenya in the context and violent aftermath of its 2007 elections. Writers, photographers, poets, cartoonists provide collective narratives on what we were before, and what we became, during the epochal first 100 days of 2008. The issue also features a extended travel piece based in Uganda that comparatively explores the concept of ethnicity, and the history of a peoples in a space other than our own.

The panelists will include:

Joy Mboya – Kenya Burning Exhibition

Billy Kahora – Kwani Trust

Boniface Mwangi – Photographer

Patrick Gathara – Cartoonist

David Kaiza – Writer

Earnest Waititu- Mainstream media monitor

Tom Odhiambo – Facilitator

Sunday Salon- April 19

Kwani Trust is inviting you to Sunday Salon on Sunday 19th April 2009 ,7pm at Kengeles Lavington, Lavington Green. Entry: ksh300.
Free entry before 6.30pm.

Readings will be from Jambula Tree:

JAMBULA TREE

Jambula Tree and Other Stories: The Caine Prize for African Writing, 8th Annual Collection, published 2008.

Titled after the short story by the 8th winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing, Uganda’s Monica Arac de Nyeko, the Jambula Tree anthology contains the latest in African writing with a selection of stories from across the continent.The book includes 18 short stories- the winner and shortlist (5 stories) plus 12 stories written at the Caine Prize writers workshop held in April 2008 in South Africa.In the book are stories that deal with topics as wide apart as love, war, manhood, marriage and the African urban experience.

The Readers:

Monica Arac de Nyeko

Monica Arac de Nyeko is from Uganda. She was shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African writing in 2004 for ‘Strange Fruit, winning the prize in 2007 for ‘Jambula Tree’.

Kingwa Kamencu

Kingwa Kamencu is a writer based in Kenya. Her first book ‘To Grasp at a Star’ won the National Book Development Council Award 2003, The Wahome Mutahi Prize 2006 and the prestigious Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literarure 2007. She was one of the two Kenyans nominated Rhodes Scholar to Oxford where she will be proceeding for further studies later in the year. She serves as deputy secretary general in PEN International’s Kenya Chapter and writes for the authoritative media monitoring magazine Xpression Today (E.T). She writes poetry, essays and fiction.

Kaume Marambii

Kaume Marambii is a self-employed businessman running an agri-business in Kenya called Golden Acres Ltd. He has a degree in Veterinary Medicine from the University of Nairobi, a post-graduate Diploma in Information Technology from the University of Sunderland, UK. He was also a 2003-2004 Reuters Digital Vision Fellow at Stanford University, USA. This is his first work of fiction.

2009 Commonwealth Short Story Competition

The Commonwealth Short Story Competition is an annual
scheme to support new creative writing and promote a
wider range of Commonwealth voices.

It is funded and administered by the Commonwealth
Foundation and the Commonwealth Broadcasting
Association. Each year around 25 winning and highly
commended stories from the different regions of the
Commonwealth are recorded on to CDs and broadcast on
radio stations across the Commonwealth.

Anyone who is a citizen of a Commonwealth country can
enter, whether a professional or amateur writer. Stories
should be original, unpublished, written in English and no
more than 600 words long. Entry is free.

Full information on how to enter can be found here

or email e.dcosta@commonwealth.int

First prize- £2,000
Regional prizes- £500

Deadline: 11 May 2009.