Goethe Institut gives space for women writers to hone their skills

At a time when many Kenyan creative writers are said to be producing few works of note, there has surprisingly been an upsurge in the productivity of world-class literary works by the country’s women writers.

Among them have been two Kenyan Caine Prize winners, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor and Okwiri Oduor, whose short stories "Weight of Whispers" and "My Father’s Head", respectively, won the prize in 2003 and 2014.

While Owuor has been associated with the Kwani? stable, Ms Oduor has for years attended the writers’ forum that has regularly taken place at the Goethe Institut in Nairobi for nearly a decade.

According to Ms Lydia Gaitirira, a former Kenyatta University senior administrator, many young women writers have greatly benefited from the gatherings, which are organised by AMKA Kenya, an organisation she co-founded in 1997 “to expand the creative space for Kenyan women”.

“There is need . . . to harness creative talents in girls and women in a hitherto male-dominated socio-economic domain,” she wrote in her foreword to Fresh Paint Volume 1, the first collection of literary vignettes by Kenyan women, published in 2011, and which was followed up by the second volume, published in 2015.

FEMININE THEMES
Both volumes contain the works of women writers who have been associated with the forum, which has been in existence since 2009, and which has been regularly holding meetings once a month at the Goethe Institut library in Nairobi.

The themes in the stories and poems are distinctively feminine, running the gamut from promiscuity, prostitution and sexual exploitation of women to abortion, domestic violence and forced female genital mutilation. Other themes are human and child trafficking as well as the eternal pursuit of the often elusive love.

As for the regular writers’ forums, they are aimed at providing a much needed creative space for budding women writers, and include presentations by renowned personalities, among them eminent literary figures, followed by readings and discussions by the participants.

Among those who have made presentations at the forum are such writers as Muthoni Likimani, Muthoni Garland and Prof Austin Bukenya, as well as the versatile writer Tony Mochama.

Other writers who have attended forum discussions include Christopher Okemwa, the 2015 Burt Award winner, and the late dramatist and children’s writer Dr Ezekiel Alembi.

“The AMKA/ Goethe Institut forum has been running for eight years now, taking place every last Saturday of the month at the Goethe Library,” Ms Gaitirira explained during a recent interview. “The forum is open to both women and men, even though the short stories and poems published in the two collections are by women.”

PUBLICATIONS AND AWARDS

According to her, the different writers’ stories and poems are routinely discussed during each session with a view to helping the authors to improve their writing. She added that the final decisions on what gets into the publications are made on the basis of the improved versions.

Explaining that the forum has been vastly successful over the years, Gaitirira says some of its members have eventually had their works appear in different publications.

Moreover, a few of them have also won international awards, even as a handful of the authors were awarded prestigious writing scholarships and major international fellowships.

She says the most successful members of the forum include Okwiri Oduor, who was a contributor to the first volume of the forum’s publication Fresh Paint, named after a story in the forum written by Faith Oneya, yet another budding author.

Writing at the time as Claudette Oduor, the Caine Prize winner contributed "Children of the Dark", one of the most impressive stories in the collection. Such early efforts by Ms Oduor apparently paved the way for the promising writer’s bagging of the Caine Prize for African Writing years later.

RISING STATUS

Consequently, her winning story appeared — together with the four other shortlisted ones and 12 other specially written stories — in The Gonjon and the Pin: The Caine Prize for African Writing 2014, which was published by the New Internationalist, and which is widely available around the world.

From her humble beginnings at the Nairobi writing forum, Oduor would end up taking up a month’s residence at Georgetown University, working as a Writer-in-Residence at the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice. She was also a 2014 MacDowell Colony fellow.

As a result of the Caine Prize win, she was also invited to take part in the Open Book Festival in Cape Town in September 2014, as well as participating in the Storymoja Hay Festival in Nairobi and the Ake Festival in Nigeria.

Those openings aside, Oduor’s status continued to rise both nationally and globally when she was named on the Hay Festival’s Africa39 list of 39 Sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 “with potential and talent to define trends in African literature”.

Her story "Rag Doll" was among those included in Africa39: New Writing from Africa South of the Sahara, the subsequent anthology edited by Ellah Allfrey, Wole Soyinka and Shadreck Chikoti. Oduor’s story was published alongside one by Ndinda Kioko, yet another eminent member of the Goethe forum.

The latter was also a Miles Morland Scholar for 2014, and also had a story published in Jalada 00: Sketch of a Bald Woman in the Semi-Nude and Other Stories, the 2014 anthology edited by Anne Moraa and Kate Hampton. Writing as Jacqueline Ndinda Kioko, she contributed two short stories to the first Fresh Paint volume that emanated from the forum.

MAKING A MARK

As for Ms Oduor, her novella titled The Dream Chasers had as early as 2012 been commended for the  Commonwealth Book Prize. Her work has also appeared in many other publications, and she is reportedly working on her first full-length novel.

Not all the forum’s participants’ work has made its way into the two volumes, though. However, forum coordinator Gaitirira says that some of those not represented in the two volumes have made their marks in other ways.

For instance, the versatile and prolific actress, journalist, creative writer and poet Ngwatilo Mawiyoo is credited with publishing Blue Mothertongue, a poetry anthology, in 2010. She was also shortlisted for the Brunel University African Prize in 2015.

Other members of the forum who have with the passage of time become leading participants on the Kenyan literary scene include Kingwa Kamenchu, who is renowned for, among other things, having won the Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature.

Both Kingwa and professional teacher Gloria Mwaniga often contribute to the Saturday Nation literary pages, and are among the most eminent personalities on the Kenyan literary scene.

While the Oxford-educated Kamenchu contributed a long poem to the first Fresh Paint volume, the indefatigable Ms Mwaniga had her poetry included in both volumes, and was the only one to publish poetry in Kiswahili.

Ms Gaitirira is a sister of the late literary scholar Grant Kamenju, who was acknowledged by Ngugi wa Thiong’o as one of his mentors. As the coordinator of the successful Goethe forum, Ms Gaitirira vows to keep the fire of Kenyan women’s creative writing burning.