African Writers Conference, an event conceptualised by the African Writers Development Trust, is set to debut in Abuja.
Themed ‘Re-imagining African Literature: New Voices, New Narratives in the Fight for the Girl-Child’, the event is to take place from November 30 to December 2 at the International Conference Centre, Abuja.
Guests at the occasion will include award-winning Tanzanian author Nahida Esmail, Kenya’s Faith Mutheu, Nigeria’s Sandra Oma Etubiebi among several others.
Esmail is author of four Young Adult novels and ten children’s picture books, three of which have been translated into Swahili and one translated into Maa, the language of the Maasai. Her four young adult novels, ‘Living in the Shade’, ‘Lesslie the City Maasai’, ‘Detectives of Shangani’, and ‘Living in the Shade: Aiming for the Summit’ have all received CODE’s Burt Award for African Literature.
Winner of the 2017 Xtreem Awards for Most Influential Young Person in Kenya, Mutheu is author of ‘Beyond Obstacles-Developing the champion in you!’, a book that she wrote at the age of seventeen and published at the age of nineteen. She is currently a scholar at Google Udacity, having received the 2018 Google Africa Scholarship.
Oma Etubiebi has authored two books, ‘Secrets of the Anthem’ and ‘Is God Making You Lazy?’ In recognition of her transformative work in the lives of people, programs and processes, she received the 2017 HRL Prince Saka Dbosz Junior Merit Award for Excellence in Leadership and Mentoring.
The African Writers Conference is aimed at bringing together writers of African descent to a common platform, build bridges for networking, provide opportunities for writers to promote themselves and their work, and sustain a conversation on advancing the collective interests of African writers.
This year’s conference is supported by UNESCO, Writers Guild Kenya, the Association of Nigerian Authors (Abuja Chapter), Poetica Magazine, among several others.
