The African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF) will be holding a creative non-fiction workshop in Kampala, Uganda, organised by FEMRITE Uganda Women Writers Association from the 21st to the 31st of July 2014. The lead facilitators for the workshop will be Mamle Kabu, and Yewande Omotoso.
This workshop is targeted at writers and activists who wish to use the power of the written word to highlight issues around women’s rights and social justice. Participants taking part in this workshop will be expected to read widely from assigned selected texts, and to complete daily written exercises.
The organisation of this workshop forms part of AWDF’s efforts to raise African women’s voices. Writers who participate in this workshop will be supported to have their articles placed in a range of local, regional and international media. In line with AWDF’s ethos, efforts will be made to ensure that at least 20% of the writers selected for this workshop will be women from existing grantee organisations and activists from civil society spaces.
Accommodation and a travel grant will be provided for all accepted applicants who are able to attend for the duration of the workshop.
Application Guidelines
Deadline for submission is 23rd March 2014. Only those accepted to the workshop will be notified by 30th May 2014.
To apply, send an e-mail to writing@africlub.net/awdf
Your e-mail subject should read ‘Workshop Application’
The body of the e-mail should contain the following:
1. Your Name
2. Your Address
3. A short bio (maximum 200 words)
4. A sample article addressing an issue around women’s rights or social justice (of between 500 and 1000 words)
* Please state in your email if you are a member of an AWDF grantee organisation or network member
* The sample article could be either published or unpublished
Facilitators Bio
Mamle Kabu
Photo credit: Printex
Mamle Kabu, a writer of Ghanaian and German parentage, was born in Ghana and attended the University Primary School, Legon, and Achimota Secondary School.
At the age of 14 she moved to the United Kingdom. She completed her secondary schooling there, after which she studied at the University of Cambridge, where she obtained her BA and MA in Modern Languages and her MPhil in Latin-American Studies. She returned to Ghana in 1992 where she has since been resident and works as a freelance consultant in development issues.
Mamle took up fiction writing in the late 1990s and has since written a number of short stories, all of which have been published in various anthologies and journals in Africa, the UK and the US. One of these is “The End of Skill,” which was nominated for the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2009. In 2011, for the first time, Mamle turned her hand to writing for children and published a young adult novel under the name Mamle Wolo. This book, entitled ‘The Kaya-Girl,’ won the 2011 Burt Award for African Literature in Ghana. Mamle has also written poetry, two screenplays and is working on a novel. She is a co-director of the Writers’ Project of Ghana and a keen believer in fostering writing talent and strengthening networks between African writers. In the past three years, she has attended a number of international writing workshops including the Farafina Writer’s Workshop by Chimamanda Adichie in Lagos, the Caine Prize Workshop in Kenya and the Femrite annual residency in Uganda. She combines her work and writing with the raising of her two children.
Yewande Omotoso
Yewande Omotoso was born in Barbados in 1980 and grew up in Nigeria with her Barbadian mother, Nigerian father and two older brothers. The family moved to South Africa in 1992.
Yewande trained as an architect at the University of Cape Town, to which she returned after working as an architect for several years, to complete a Masters degree in Creative Writing. The product of her degree is her debut novel ‘Bomboy’ published in 2011 by Cape Town publisher Modjaji Books. ‘Bomboy’ was shortlisted for the 2012 Sunday Times Literary Awards as well as the MNet Film Award, it won the South African Literary Award (SALA) for First Time Author Prize. Prior to ‘Bomboy’ Yewande authored several stories, among them ‘The Piano’ (2nd Place, People Opposing Women Abuse, 2005) and ‘Maude Hastings’ (Honourable Mention, John La Rose Short Story Competition, 2007). In addition she has published ‘Heroes’ with online crime fiction magazine ‘Noir Nation’ and ‘Two Old People’ in the anthology ‘Speaking for the Generation: Contemporary Stories from Africa’. Yewande’s poetry (‘Stranger’ and ‘The Rain’) has been published in the ‘Baobab Literary Journal’ 2009. ‘The Rain’ was shortlisted for the Sol Plaatjie European Union Poetry Awards 2012.
Omotoso, for whom writing is a means to make sense of the world, is interested in the complexity of human experiences as well as the incongruities of life. Loneliness is a recurring theme. Omotoso views her writing as a tool for compassion and evoking self-examination. For her talent and the intent to tell stories, she credits her parents and a childhood steeped in reading and the sharing of ideas.