An evening tea date with Glaydah Namukasa

Glaydah Namukasa started writing in secondary school when she was introduced to literature as a school subject but she kept all her writing to herself. Only later did she open up and let other people start to read her work. She is proud that a friend finally dragged her to FEMRITE because she was a little scared of being unaccomplished among established writers. She credits the readers writers club hard hitting critique while making great use of the self help books in the FEMRITE resource centre.

Glaydah Namukasa

Book Review: World of Our Own and other stories

World of Our Own and other stories is a short story collection born out of the 2nd FEMRITE residency for African women writers that was held in January 2011 in Jinja, Uganda. The residency is open to all African women writers. Participants were from Ghana, South Africa, Nigeria, Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia, and of course Uganda. The 2nd FEMRITE residency was supported by Commonwealth Foundation and Swedish Institute and two of the facilitators were from Sweden.

One might argue that the diverse backgrounds of the writers are responsible for the uniqueness of each story. True as that may be, the different spice in each story is also attributed to the well honed craft displayed by most of the writers. Albeit being universal, the themes explored therein have been written about before, so kudos to the writers for putting fresh embellishments on them to sustain the readers’ interest.

3rd FEMRITE residency kicks off

Sunday 13th November 2011 marked the start of the 3rd FEMRITE Residency for African Women Writers. This year 15 women writers from 11 countries are represented; South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Tunisia and Uganda.

Participants at the 3rd FEMRITE residency at one of the sessions

The residency aims to encourage intercultural discourse among African women writers, to inspire African women to write together, to give women space and time to write and to strengthen regional co-operation. 

The residency is facilitated by award winning writers Doreen Baingana and Ellen Banda-Aaku who is also writer-in-residence for African Writers Trust.

The residency is set to close on 25th November 2011 but will be crowned off with a book launch for the latest FEMRITE anthology 'World of Our Own and other stories' which is a result of writings from the 2nd FEMRITE residency.
Participants from the 3rd residency will also read a sample of their writing at the evening of the launch.

Book cover of 'World of Our Own'

The 3rd FEMRITE residency is supported by STICHTING DOEN, Art Moves Africa and Danish Embassy Kampala.