BOOKS: Literary festival coming up

• The writers’ festival will take place from August 1 to 15 in Nairobi and Lamu.

And she writes it with the freshness and vividness of someone who was actually there. And, for her troubles, she won the prestigious Orange Prize for Literature in 2007.

Another personality who will be coming for the festival is Ishmael Beah, a former child soldier in Sierra Leone, whose book, A Long Way Gone, has caused enough controversy in the literary world.

There is also Doreen Baingana, a Ugandan whose book, Tropical Fish: Stories out of Entebbe, won a Commonwealth Prize in 2006, among others.

Another Ugandan, Monica Arac de Nyeko, winner of the 2007 Caine Prize for her story The Jambula Tree,will also be coming. Aminatta Forna will also make an appearance.

She is a writer of fiction and non-fiction. Her critically acclaimed memoir of her political dissident father and her country Sierra Leone, The Devil that Danced on the Water, was runners-up for the Samuel Johnson Prize 2003.

Her novel, Ancestor Stones, has been nominated for several awards and translated into a dozen languages.

Gambian in Kenya

Dayo Forster, a Gambian based in Kenya, will also be there. Her book, Reading the Ceiling, was short-listed for the 2008 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize Best First Book for the Africa Region.Most of these foreign authors will be conducting writing workshops at Club Undecided in Westlands at a fee.

There will be all manner of talent at the festival, ranging from journalists, poets, writers to movie-makers. Topping the list of local stars is the other rebel, the mercurial Tony Mochama, otherwise known as Smitta Smitten.

Now, Mochama is not your everyday journalist. He is a gossip columnist extraordinaire, a poet and a trained lawyer. Late last year, he wrote his poetry anthology titled What if I am a Literary Gangster?

There is also Muthoni Garland who, together with five other writers, formed Storymoja, with the aim of publishing and promoting outstanding East African writing. Muthoni is also the author of Tracking the Scent of my Mother, which was nominated for the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2006.