Ten African writers including four from Malawi are currently participating in an intensive two-week workshop in Salima organised by Caine Prize for African Writing.
The workshop, which started on Tuesday and ends on June 29 2024 and is taking place in the country for the first time, will see the 10 writers producing short stories at the end, which will be put into a Caine Prize anthology alongside five shortlisted stories from this year’s prize.
“As I speak, judges have convened to decide on this year’s shortlist,” Caine Prize for African Writing Interim Director Vimbai Shire said yesterday.
She called upon writers in the country to keep writing, participate in competitions and not give up even after their work has faced rejection.
“Submit work for publication. As Caine Prize for African Writing that is involved with African writers across the continent, we need your work and voices,” Shire said.
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She said every year they organise a workshop in different African countries and that it has always been on their radar to come to Malawi.
“We are excited to be here in Malawi in 2024. We have two tutors, who are working with the participants to shape their stories into publishable standard,” she said.
Shire said writers who participate in the workshop are taken from those who are shortlisted every year and that, in others, they get recommendations including developing writers.
The local writers participating are Foster Benjamin, Ndongolera Mwangupili, Beulla Tambala, Yanjanani Banda with the others coming from Tanzania, Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya and Lesotho.
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Mwangupili, who is based in Mzuzu, described the workshop as enriching.
“We are going deep and this will help us produce well-woven stories,” the writer, who is also a teacher, said.
Benjamin also said the workshop is significant to the country, particularly to the Malawian fiction writers and creative writers in general.
“We are being drilled by world-class tutors, who are inculcating in us knowledge in as far as good story writing is concerned. Malawian writers participating will take their writing to the next level and it will never be the same,” he said.
Mawu President C h i k u m b u t s o Ndaferankhande said the Caine Prize workshop is a big plus to the creative writing-sector in the country.
“All the four local writers participating are Mawu members, so, most definitely it’s a plus since the participants are brushing shoulders with the crème de la crème of African writing. They are learning from the best,” the Mawu leader said.
Caine Prize for African Writing is an annual award for African creative writing founded in 2000. It is one of Africa’s oldest short story prizes awarded to the best short story by an African writer.
