PROJECTS
Ugandan writer, Doreen Bangaina, at Franschhoek Literary Fest
AFAI hosted award-winning Ugandan writer Doreen Baingana (far right) at this year’s Franschhoek Literary Festival which took place from 13 to 15 May 2011.
Ms Baingana is the author of Tropical Fish: Stories out of Entebbe, which won the AWP Short Fiction Award and the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Book, 2006. She has also won a Washington Independent Writers Fiction Prize, an Emerging Writer’s Fellowship from the Writer’s Center, and was a finalist twice for the Caine Prize for African Writing. Her stories and essays have appeared in journals in such as Glimmer Train, African American Review, Chelsea, Callaloo, The Guardian (UK), Chimurenga and Kwani.
She holds a law degree from Makerere University and an MFA from the University of Maryland and was a Writer-in-Residence there and a Bread Loaf Writers Conference Fellow. She worked for ten years at VOA and has led creative writing workshops in the US, Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda. She is the managing editor of Storymoja, a Kenyan publishing house that organizes the Storymoja Hay Festival. She lives in Nairobi with her son and is currently working on her first novel. (http://tropicalfishetc.blogspot.com/)
Ms Baingana participated in three sessions at the Franschhoek Literary Festival. In Mindfields, with novelists Finuala Dowling (Homemaking for the Down-at-Heart) and Kei Miller (The Last Warner Woman), and chaired by Christopher Hope, the participants explored how writers tap into memory sources for their novels. In Short Stories Africa, chaired by Professor Harry Garuba, African Arts Institute Chairperson (top photo, far left), the panel included Henrietta Rose-Innes (2nd from left; author of Homing) and Meg Vandermerwe (2nd from right; author of This Place I Call Home) and discussion was around the increasing popularity of short stories.
In Secret Women’s Business Edyth Bulbring used the Australian Aboriginal concept of a place where women go to discuss their affairs to delve into the writing lives of Ms Baingana, Marguerite Abouet, the graphic author of the Aya series, and poet and writer Arja Salafranca (The Thin Line).
African Writers' Birthday Calendar
She also attended the launch of AFAI’s African Writers’ Birthday Calendar, and of the book Voices A compilation of testimonials: African Artists living and working in Cape Town and surrounds which took place at the Festival on Saturday 14 May 2011.
PHOTO: Doreen Baingana, top right, with artists featured in AFAI's publication, Voices, and staff members of the Cape Town Refugee Centre.
Tropical Fish
In her book Tropical Fish, Tales from Entebbe, Baingana follows a Ugandan girl as she navigates the uncertain terrain of adolescence. A synopsis on www.randomhouse.com reads as follows: "Set mostly in pastoral Entebbe with stops in the cities Kampala and Los Angeles, Tropical Fish depicts the reality of life for Christine Mugisha and her family after Idi Amin’s dictatorship.
"Three of the eight chapters are told from the point of view of Christine’s two older sisters, Patti, a born-again Christian who finds herself starving at her boarding school, and Rosa, a free spirit who tries to “magically” seduce one of her teachers. But the star of Tropical Fish is Christine, whom we accompany from her first wobbly steps in high heels, to her encounters with the first-world conveniences and alienation of America, to her return home to Uganda.
"As the Mugishas cope with Uganda’s collapsing infrastructure, they also contend with the universal themes of family cohesion, sex and relationships, disease, betrayal, and spirituality. Anyone dipping into Baingana’s incandescent, widely acclaimed novel will enjoy their immersion in the world of this talented newcomer."
Visit Doreen’s blogspot at http://tropicalfishetc.blogspot.com
To order Voices A compilation of testimonials: African Artists living and working in Cape Town and surrounds or the African Writers’ Birthday Calendar, email info@afai.org.za or call +27 ()21 465 9027.