 So hi everybody, you're welcome to our webinar. I'll just wait for a bit for more people to join in and then we will start shortly, maybe within a minute or so. Okay, so maybe we'll start now then. Hi everybody, welcome to the Sewers Conversation with the Cain Prize shortlisted authors and our theme today is African Literatures in the Digital Age. Our shortlisted authors are in no particular order, Doreen Bangana, Maron Hadero and Irene Tushabe. I will quickly introduce them. So okay, Doreen Bangana is a Ugandan writer and her short story collection Tropical Fish won the Grace Paley Prize for short fiction and also the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Book Africa Region. Two stories in it were nominated for the Cain Prize in 2004 or 2005 as well. So this is a Cain Prize person. She's also published two children's books as well as stories and essays in numerous international residents, sorry, Donalds. Other awards that she has won includes the Myers-Morland Scholarship, a Rockefeller Bellagio Residency, a Tiberi Arts Foundation Player Arts Residency and in 2021 Sustainable Arts Foundation grant. She co-founded and runs the Mauazo Africa Writing Institute which is based in Anteber, Uganda. Mauazo is so healing for thoughts and I find this very interesting so maybe we can talk about that later with her. Maron Hadero is a European American. She was born in Addis Ababa and she went to the US via Germany so we have a very international author here. So she went there as a young child. She's the winner of the 2020 Restless Book Prize for New Immigrant Writing and her short stories have been shortlisted for the 2019 Cain Prize, another Cain Prize person for African Writing and published by, I hope I can say this correctly, I think it is Ziziva but she can tell us later if I got that right or wrong. Also, plowshares Addis Ababa Noir, Maxuini's Quarterly Concern, The Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, New England Review, Best American Short Stories among others. So this is very well published. Her writing has also been in the New York Times Book Review, The Displaced Refugee, Writers on Refugee Lives and also will appear in the forthcoming anthology, Letter to a Stranger, Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us. Ah, that's interesting. She's a 2019-2020 Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University. She's been a Fellow at Yadow, Rackdale, and Macdowell and her writing has been supported by the International Institute at the University of Michigan, the Elizabeth Jordan Foundation and Artist Trust. Maren is an alum of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation where she worked as a research analyst for the President of Global Development. That's really brilliant. And she also holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan, a JED from Yale, and a BA History from Princeton with a Certificate in American Studies. So we have a very well-rounded author here. Irene Tushabe is a Ugandan-Canadian writer and journalist. So we have you, Uganda, has a very central space in the short listing of the Cane Prize this year. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in Briar Patch Magazine, Ada, Prayers North. Her short fiction has appeared in Grain Magazine, the Carter v. Copper or Five-Copper Transfiction Anthology. Maybe she will tell us how to say that properly when she says it later. And also in the Journey Prize, the story is 30. She's the winner of the 2020 City of Regina Writing Award. Congratulations. And she's currently finishing her debut novel. Everything is fine here. So we're just getting a taste of what she's done. And we have more to come, which I find very, very, very, very interesting. So these three writers, authors have given us fantastic short stories. And my understanding indeed is that some are written as short stories, and some actually part of novels, of books. And so then they will tell us about this themselves. And so we have exciting reading to look forward to. One thing I love about short stories is how you normally have a plot, one plot, and you really engage with it. And you come out with satisfied questioning. You go away, you think, you know, like, oh, maybe this, maybe that. I just love that about short stories. You read, you engage, and you go. And their short stories explore various themes, which include displacement, tragedy. So, for example, I think in Lucky, you have the boy who has been told, you're lucky to be stuck here. So I go, all right, then. They're also exploring war, death and grief, there's a lot of death and grief, and how communities grieve together or not. And there's also issues of like the spirit world, the world of ancestors. So they also explore African philosophy, as we understand it now. Mythology, there's rituals. And there are also dialogues, which I find very fascinating, dialogues between generations within the books, relationships. There's issues of belonging, which most of us in diaspora can really relate to. And I find that really fascinating. There's so much masculinity, your name it is there, but they will explore this with us together. So for today, each author will have about 10 minutes. If they want, they can use more or less, it's really up to them, where they will maybe introduce the book or just read from a part of their, not the book, introduce the short stories or just read apart from it. And we will start with Doreen and Meron and then Irene. After doing this, we will have a discussion. And we have some sort of like some questions that we've sort of like prepared that I will introduce to you after they have read the short section. So without holding on to the mic for much longer, let me welcome you, Doreen. Thank you very much, Ida. And I'm really happy to be here. I wish I was at SOA's live, but I suppose this is the second best option. So you were right about the story being an extract of a novel I've been working on. It was a chapter of a novel based on the Alice Laquena war in Northern Uganda from 1986 to 1987. And I wanted to also explore what happens with innocent bystanders, if you will, people who are not directly involved but are affected by. So this story was inspired by someone telling me about being left at school during the war period. And it's not that chapter itself I extracted and then shaped it into a short story. So I'll read a little bit. I'll read from the beginning so it should be quite, I don't have to set it up as such. We've been left behind. It's another morning. So we're in the school garden looking for lunch. The maze is still too young, too dark a green. But what can we do? It's not easy reaching for the long bulbs with yellow wisps like white people's hair. The leaves cut our arms and legs with their razor sharp fuzz because they don't want us to steal their cobs. But that doesn't stop us. The ache of emptiness keeps us going. Those who pick will eat more so we work as fast as we can. All around me boys crumble around making the dry leaves on the ground crackle as loud as roosters. Or does it seem so loud because the rest of the school is silent? Eh, but hunger can make you do things. Three days ago, Ochiti and Bosco clambered over the fence and ate like 20 hard green mangoes from the old orchard that is now more like a forest. Rumour says the owners went to exile long ago, England or somewhere. But how we laughed at those two when they spent the whole night running back and forth from the pit la tree, laughing to cover our jealousy because at least they had felt full, content for a few hours. Envious because they were brave enough to venture out of school, what with all the stories of the La Cuenna rebels roaming around and worse, the new government soldiers who still behaved like the rebels they had been for. Was it six years? This is why school has closed and why 11 of us are stuck here. We can't go back to our homes in the North, Gulu district, West now. There's nowhere to pass because of the fighting. Everyone else lucky enough to live or have relatives in the South has left. My auntie Joyce is in Kampala somewhere, but I don't know where exactly and I don't have her phone number or anything. I tried calling my father back home in Aboke to ask but his number was off. And the headmaster, big head, since he competes with the hippos, shrugged as he took the office phone from my hands. That was it. I was staying. And yet he, whose job it is to take care of the school, took off with the rest and left us. He didn't even turn his hippo head to look back at us as the school bus rumbled out of the gate, packed full of teachers and students like onions in a sack. Only Mr. Koma Ketch, the mouthy maths teacher, has stayed behind with us. Even the workers have left. Can you imagine? Koma, as we call him, because he never stops talking, said he wanted to enjoy the war properly and laughed. But it seems he's stuck here too. He can talk us to death. But for some reason, my eyes can't stop following how his large lips chew around the words like they are tasty. Don't ask me what the war is all about. The new government army or former rebels was now fighting rebels who had been the old government army. So what's the difference? They've switched places like we did back home when we were seven, eight. Those days, Ugandans versus Tanzanians and the rule was that the Tanzanians had to win because they had saved us from Idi Amin. Oh, but it was wild running through the compounds, scattering the cackling chicken, dogs barking with excitement and joining us as we scrambled through the shambas, wind whistling over and under our shouts. Oh, wow. Got you. Die. Shooting each other dead with stick guns, screaming, falling, then getting up, brushing off the dust and dried leaves and changing sides. I was really good at folding in slow motion, arms and legs flailing, body jerking in the dust, like the soldiers on Bob's father's TV, which he allowed us to watch from the outside, peering in through their windows. And here I am fighting with the Mace cops against a son, a son, hammering my forehead. Thank God for no Baba visits. At least my bushy hair is a sun shield. After picking four cops, I turned to a cheaty. How many have you got? Five? That's enough for now. Let's go. Komah had ordered us all to stay in one dome to keep each other company, he said. Birds of a feather do what? And he cocked his head to one side like he too was a bird, tall, dark and smooth. The way he talks, you'd think we've remained behind for fun, like it's a holiday at school because we like it so much. Sheer. Big head also called it a free term, since we weren't paying, since we are paying fees, as if he's done us a favor, as if we are stupid. Here we are, no assembly, no teachers except one, no cooks or cleaners, no sports, nothing. Free term? How about prison? Ask me what prison is like and I'll tell you, whole hours, days, stretching out like an endless line of ants, filled with nothing but the same routine chores, and then sitting around staring emptily at the same few pimply faces, listening to our stomachs grow, our thoughts roaming the carefree past, or a fantastic future, circling, circling, to avoid the wide, flat, dry, now. I'll stop there for now. Thank you so much. It sounds completely different when you read it because now that we have all the sounds and sort of like, you know, it's fantastic. I really enjoyed that very much. Thank you very much. So we'll talk about this as we move on. And the next, good. I think I'm losing my mind. It's Marron. You're welcome, Marron. Thank you. There we go. Thank you. And it's pronounced as the magazine that the story appears in. And I'll just read from the beginning, the first few pages. And the story is part of a forthcoming collection. It'll be out next spring and it's called a down home meal for these difficult times. And it's about immigrants, refugees, and those facing displacement. And this story falls in that last category, the street sweep. Gaitou stood in front of his mirror, struggling to perfect a Windsor knot. He pulled the end of his tie through the loop, but the knot unraveled in his hands. He tried again, and again he failed. Did he really need the tie? He guessed it would probably be easier to persuade the guards of the Sheraton to let him in with one. And even then. But he couldn't work out the steps, so Gaitou put the necktie in his pocket and decided to try his luck without it. Sitting at the edge of his mattress, he waited for the hour to pass. He didn't want to arrive too early to eager. His mattress was on the floor in the corner and it was covered with all of his clothes, which earlier that evening he had tried on, considered, ruled out, reconsidered, tossed aside before choosing a blue shirt stained under the arms, but he'd concealed the stains with his jacket and black pants. Until that day, Gaitou thought this was an adequate wardrobe, fairly nice for a street sweeper, but he had noticed even his best pants were worn at the hem, so he brought them to his mother. She was busy chopping onions and her red hands and tearful eyes gave Gaitou pause. He didn't want to add to her burden, but he needed her help. Mama, he said, and she immediately responded later and walked right past him to the garden to pick hot peppers. He thumbed the rebellious threads that seemed to be disintegrating in his fingers. Please, Mama, the stitching is coming apart. She didn't look up from her vegetable garden, so he pressed on. I need to look nice for Mr. Jeff's farewell party. Ah, Mr. Jeff, she turned to face Gaitou and would have thrown up her hands except for the peppers resting on her lifted apron. Again, with Mr. Jeff, she groaned. I have to see him. It's his last night in Addis Ababa, and he's been so good to me, Gaitou explained, following his mother back to the kitchen. She called over her shoulder, has he been good to you? What has Mr. Jeff actually done for you? Gaitou hesitated, then said, Mr. Jeff told me he has something for me. He did have said more, but she was barely paying attention to him, focused on wiping off the peppers on her apron, splitting them in half, and taking out all the seeds. Mama, he said, I heard you. It's just, what is it you imagine he has for you? Gaitou didn't dare honestly answer that question. His mother's ridicule primed for the slightest provocation. Ever since Jeff Johnson invited him to the party, Gaitou couldn't help himself from guessing what this something might be. Over their months of friendship, Jeff Johnson had told Gaitou how important Gaitou was to him, how his organization could use a young man like Gaitou, and what a brilliant keenhead Gaitou had on his shoulders. Gaitou's hopes had soared as he pictured the good job he'd surely be offered. In this moment, he nearly told his mother all about the new, stable life he'd imagined. The freedom from worry that would come from the big paycheck he'd surely bring in, which would be so liberating now that the government seizure of land was creeping closer neighborhood by neighborhood. Even the Tedloos had lost their home a month ago, and they only lived five blocks away. But Gaitou simply replied, I just want to say goodbye to Mr. Jeff. Gaitou, if this Mr. Jeff really wants you at his party, then he won't care what you are. But mama, it's at the Sheraton, Gaitou whispered. At the Sheraton, did you say? She turned and stared at him with raised eyebrows and a sorry look in her eyes. It's at the Sheraton, her tone started high, then fell with Gaitou's spirits. Do you really think this man wants you there at the Sheraton? He invited you to a party at the Sheraton? Only a man who has spent every day here having his shoes licked and every door flung open would be so unaware as to invite a boy like you to the Sheraton, to the Sheraton? Who is this Mr. Jeff? Gaitou didn't have the courage to reply, so she continued. Let me tell you, he comes, a chauffeur to one international office after another, and at the end of the night, he goes to the fancy clubs on Bowley Road. These drinks passes out, wakes up, then calls his chauffeur, who slept lightly with the phone placed right by his head, and with a ringer turned up high, so as not to miss a call from the likes of Mr. Jeff and disappoint the likes of Mr. Jeff. And then one day, this Mr. Jeff invites my boy to a party at the Sheraton. At the Sheraton? Don't never let you in, of course. The Sheraton? Oh, I could go on about this, Mr. Jeff. Gaitou's mother had long ago formed her opinion about the Mr. Jeffs of the world. She had seen men and women like Jeff Johnson breeze through her country for decades in old pattern. She'd kept her distance from the eager aid workers flown over for short stints with some big new NGO, this or that agency, such and such from who knows where. They appeared in her neighborhood, gave her surveys to fill out and offer things she reluctantly accepted, vaccines and vitamins, things she quite happily ponded, English language notebooks and warm clothing, and things at which she turned up her nose, genetically modified seeds and antimicrobial soap. Without fail, the Mr. Jeffs shaped and reshaped her neighborhood in new ways year in, year out. She compared them to the floods that washed out the roads in the south of the country each rainy season, carving new pathways behind them, a cyclical force of change and recreation. Each September, after the rainy season ended, and the new recruits from Western universities came to Ethiopia, she was known to have said, and now let the storms begin. Mama, Jeff, Mama Gaitou said softly, snapping his mother out of her thoughts. This is a really important night for me. I know you think that, but you're 18 and you haven't seen enough to know what I know. 18 here is like 75 anywhere else he were budded. Cant I talk sense into you is a mother's love and wisdom no match for whatever hold Mr. Jeff has over you. But Mama, we need him. He'll help us save our home. Gaitou said, finally owning up to that hope that it started as a little seed and sprouted and taken root and now seems as sturdy as an oak. After a pause that would have been enough for her to turn this idea around in her head more than once, she asked, do you really think he can do that? She didn't believe in the Mr. Jeffs who seemed predictable by now, but she knew Gaitou was full of surprises. Gaitou held out the clothes he needed mended and she took them cautiously. Gaitou followed her to the living room and watched her so expertly. As she moved the needle through the thin fabric, she flicked her wrists and mumbled the long list of chores she was putting on hold to take care of this task. Gaitou found his mood lifting as he saw her expertise with the needle and thread. His clothes looked almost new. When she'd finished, Gaitou took them gratefully from her, though he felt her resistance still, for she held her tight grip even as he pulled them away. Thank you. Wow, thank you so much. That was beautiful, Marron. Thank you so much. Thank you. So we'll talk about this as we go on. Can I invite you, Irene, to read your part or introduce it first? Thank you so much, Marron, for that brilliant reading. It's an interesting, the changes you can already see in the mother hope. Hope is a thing that is dangerous, but also, you know, good, you can't live without it. I'm going to read from my short story, A Separation, which was published in Exile Quarterly here in Canada back in 2018. And I'll read right from the top, and I hope no one is trying to read along with me because I'll do a bit of skipping and hoping about a separation. On the evening before I leave for university in Canada, I sit on the terrace of my childhood home watching kaka, my grandmother, make lemongrass tea. She pounds cubes of sugar cane with a weathered pestle. She empties the pulp into a large pot and tops it up with rainwater from a jerrycan, the same olive green as her A-shaped tunic. I step down from my bamboo chair and stride over to her. I lift the heavy pot and set it on a charcoal stove, smoldering with red-hot embers. Wewa de karakanje. She kaka thanks me in singsongru chiga, the language of our birth. She comes from a generation of pachiga who sing to people instead of talking because words, unlike music, can get lost. I smile and sit back in my creaky chair to read a copy of National Geographic that a British photographer sent me. His photograph of a troop of gorillas in my father's wildlife sanctuary is on the cover of the magazine and the accompanying article quotes me, blaming the Ugandan government, for refusing to support our conservation efforts. I hope I don't get into trouble for this, I say. Kaka laughs the sound of tumbling water. You flutter yourself if you think the fierce leaders of our republic have time to read foreign magazines. She chops fresh lemongrass leaves on a tree stump, sniffing the bits in her hands before tossing them into the pan. The simmering infusion is already turning the light yellow color of honey and will taste just as sweet. As the herb steeps, a citrusy fragrance curls into the evening like an offering. Kaka finds the steam towards her nose and inhales noisily, closing her eyes to savor the aroma. It is ready. She says a short while later, rolling out a mat woven from dried palm fronds. She sits on it, legs outstretched, hands clasped in her lap. This is how it's always been with us. Kaka makes the tea, I serve it. I pull the sleeves of my oversized sweater over my fingers and lift the pan off the stove. With a ladle, I fill two mugs. I give Kaka hers and sit down next to her, blowing on my cup before sucking hot tea into my mouth. Its sweetness has an edge. You'll do very well in your studies overseas. There's finality in her voice. When the invitation from the University of Regina's Anthropology and Archaeology department arrived months ago, I showed her saying I would go only if I had her blessing. You'll acquire some new knowledge and a whole world of wisdom. I'll be home for Christmas, I tell her now. Yes, you will. Something to look forward to. Three weeks later, I'm standing by my open living room window, looking down at the street, watching people go about the business of living. I arrived in Regina Saskatchewan on the tail end of summer. The August heat has turned my apartment into a sweltering cavern. Mr. Stevenson, the silver-haired professor who met me at the airport, will be supervising my doctoral research. He also found this Monroe Place apartment for me. I can't seem to say the street name right, though. Is it Monroe, as in Marilyn Monroe, the deceased American actress, or Monroe, like a row of moons? Dark clouds have gathered above the high rise across the street, as they're getting ready to pounce. But the sunlight pierces their serrated margins, turning them into silver beacons. The sound of my cell phone jolts me. The call has a Ugandan country code. I shout into the phone. My elation keeps her name in my mouth longer, making it last. Hurry, it's me. My father answers, his voice loud and strident. A call from father frightens me a little. Always I phone him. It's never the other way around. His preferred medium of communication is email, lengthy reports with headings and subheadings. The last one had an index and a couple of footnotes about his observation of infanticide amongst chimpanzees in Chevalet Forest, our sanctuary's rainforest home. Are you there, Harriet? I brace myself. I'm here. It's about Yocaca. Father's voice suddenly acquires an uncharacteristic softness. She has died. He likes to recognize my father and sharp things. He has a prized collection of spears and pangas in his office that he says our forefathers carried with them when they migrated from Rwanda many centuries ago. In this moment, his words are a machete that cuts me to the core. I feel empty as though the part of me that small substantial has left, leaving me hollow, only skin and bone. My hand goes limp and slowly falls from my ear until finally the phone hits the carpeted floor. I can still hear father, but his voice is now muffled and distant, reaching me as though through a tunnel. I lower myself into the dining chair that has found a permanent place by my living room window. I finger the cowry shell necklace around my neck, wishing to go back in time before having this knowledge back in time when I felt whole. Time passes and it doesn't. Father's faraway voice through the phone stops and silence eclipses the room. How long have I been sitting here, lost? He will be worried when to know I can be strong. I hear the ping of email arriving. It's from father. Kaka went missing the evening before and when she didn't return by nightfall, he put together a search party. A game ranger found her body lying among the moss under a tree canopy behind the waterfalls. It was lucky he found the body when he did before some animals go to it. That would have been gruesome, father's email says. I wonder about the moment my kaka became the body. Did it hurt or was it peaceful? Outside, the dark clouds have huddled closer together, blocking out the sun. Then slanted lashes of rain beat down from the sky, battering my window pane like they once into the apartment. I pull on my sneakers and fly down the stairs, a caged bird let loose. I run toward Wascana Lake, a path shown to me by Mr. Stevenson. Gaining speed, I park gray sheets of rain as hot tears run down my cheeks. Every few minutes, bolts of lightning fire up the black skies, followed by a ripping sound like a great big cloth being torn down the seam. I splashed through silver puddles pulling on the concrete lip of the lake. I went so badly to go back home. I'll have more tea. Kaka says the evening before I leave for Canada. But when I refill her cup, she sets it on the tree stump behind her next to the kerosene lantern, radiating amber light into the dusk. The light makes shadows of the wrinkles in her mahogany face. Lying there on the mat, she looks solemn as if trying to untangle knots from an old memory. I am struck by how tiny she is, how little the space she takes up on our mat. She reminds me of a stab of a pencil one with its work, the best of its years shaved away. I was eight years old when mothers succumbed to the poison of a black mamba. That's when Kaka came to live with father and me. Grandfather had left her years before to go live with a much younger woman. On the day of my mother's funeral, Kaka told me that Nyevinji, the rain goddess of tribe worships, had called mother into the spirit world. She wanted me to understand that my mother still lived on, only now her physical presence was lost to us. I didn't tell her that her explanation was cruel, that it only made it harder for me to grieve for my mother. Tell me again how she died. I say, willing myself to accept her view of death, that it births one into a form of oneself bigger than life and visible only to the living whose eyes have grown eyes. You know how it's happened. If you still have to ask, it means you doubt. But how do you know for certain that Nyevinji took her? How do you know if Nyevinji exists? I hear myself asking Kaka because her spirit has visited me every night since she passed on. That's how I know. This is brand new information. I don't know how to respond to it. So I lie there quietly, too many questions hanging in the air above me. The day after mother's funeral, Kaka packed a picnic. She sat me down by the river and she said, repeat after me. My mother has been ushered into the spirit world. I repeated the words because she told me to, not because I believed them. Say it with conviction, she pleaded. I am certain of it. The way I know that the moon is the moon and the sun is the sun. I wanted to believe her. Really I did. But when the customary week of morning ended and I returned to school, I told anyone who asked that a snake which moves faster than most people can run was venomous, potent, and fast-acting that only two drops of it paralyzes its victims, killing them within an hour, which has a head, the shape of a coffin, and the mouth blacker than the chimney of a carousel lantern struck my mother twice. And trying to get away from this snake, she fell into the nameless river that runs through the sanctuary and the river's pat her out at its frothy mouth where it feeds the swamp. That's more or less what father had told me. The rest I'd read in his big book on snakes of East Africa. Our dead are always with us, Kaka is saying now. There's a hint of suppressed anger in her voice. You must always remember this. Why is it impossible for you to believe in a world whose existence you can't explain? You're smart enough to know that just because you can't see something that doesn't mean it's not there. And I'll stop there. Thank you so much. Wow, thank you so much. That was really fantastic. The judges, I think I feel sorry for them. I don't know what, these are just amazing, amazing shop stories. Each one of you gripped me. So I've read the stories and but then hearing you reading them, this is like a whole other experience. So before we move on to the audience, could we just quickly maybe go and sort of like think off of our shop stories and the themes that we came up with, but then please feel free to engage with them or not. It's absolutely fine. So the first thing I would say is that when you're thinking of the literary networks that have shaped your writing, and right now, like I've just seen this, there's themes of war, just from the passage that Okadorin read, for example, war and grief. And with, sorry, Irene, there's memory there, the world of ancestors, mythology maybe. And with Maron, is it like hopes that are really raised? And I'm just really worried about these hopes. And also maybe there's racial dynamics that you can already see into play. Are there any literary networks that have sort of like helped you or maybe somehow played a part in you coming up with these gripping short stories? I don't mind who wants to talk first, but if you could each think about that, who should we have or should I just, well, since you're with Irene, maybe you could start. Right. I mean, the inspiration for this story for me came, the seed for it was the death of my grandmother, who was in Uganda, and I was here in Canada and saw her death kind of, even though she was much older, you know, and we knew she wouldn't be around for too long, just the distance from her. It was really difficult for me to process that death, especially coupled with the fact that I couldn't go and attend the funeral and participate in those sorts of, you know, rituals around death that allow us, you know, to accept the physical separation of our beloved and to put them to rest. So that was difficult for me. And I actually, after I received the news, I did feel a hand on my shoulder. And I enough for me to think perhaps that's her, even though I am much like Harriet and do not believe that the death can, you know, reach out physically and touch us. But I suppose in writing this story, I also learned that I can't be too certain about what I know, or don't know, because I don't know everything. So I did learn to accept the sort of duality and the conflict that pervades, you know, this world and also the world of stories, regarding sort of the networks that have, I'm not so much on the internet too much, because I find, I do listen to podcasts a lot, though. So that is one thing that is, I found very interesting for discovering literary voices from the continent, you know, from Africa. So that is one thing that, you know, new media has made very possible for me is that when I'm writing, when I'm processing stories, when I'm going about my daily activities during the day, that I can listen to podcasts about works that other Africans have written, or that other Africans are reading, you know, work coming from the continent, because growing up, I, growing up in Uganda, and going to school in Uganda, I read Chinua Chebe, I read Wala Shreinka, I read Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and these were wonderful, but none of them were women. And there's a sort of a subconscious, you begin to think perhaps that, you know, women are good storytellers at home, around the fire, but perhaps rising belongs to the men. And that's not the case at all, as I have learned lately. And, you know, too. And it's been wonderful, wonderfully fulfilling to discover new writers, like Doreen, I left Uganda, perhaps she hadn't started writing, but I'd never heard of her, until I started writing in 2018. Wow, yes, I can never, and I think with Uganda, there's a lot of amazing literature coming out of there, I'm just thinking of Kintu right now, and the whole idea of like eschatology, you know, like, you look at mythology, and what happens to people, religion, belief in, I mean, all that, it's just really fascinating. Okay, that's interesting, thank you. Go on then, Doreen, since Irene has summoned you, we should hear from you. Yeah, maybe I started writing before Irene was born, I don't know, maybe. I highly doubt that. But my literary networks actually, there's a connection actually between the person who inspired this story, because although there's a general background of writing about the Alice Laquena war, that very good friend of mine who told me about being stuck at school in high school and the Laquena army passing through that triggered the story in my mind, was David Kaiser, who is known as A.K. Kaiser, who is a writer and cultural critic, a very good cultural critic, writes a lot of non-fiction, and I met him actually through talking about literary networks, I met him in Nairobi through the Kwanee, he had been invited, I was living in Nairobi working at a publishing house, and he went there to do some projects for Kwanee, and I got to know the folks at Kwanee, Binyavanga, Bili Kahora, actually through the Cain Prize, because when I was nominated in 2004, 2005, and I went to London, Binyavanga was there again, not as a nominee, he had won, I think, two years before, or a year before, and because Binyavanga was such a powerful, I don't know, he was a force of nature, these festivals and bring African writers together to discuss things and party, and all this would happen at the Kwanee Lake Festival, this was in the late 2000s, and so it was there that I met writers from Nigeria who are connected through Farafina at that time, I met writers from South Africa who were involved in Chimuranga, and like Antonio would come and he was the DJ, so somehow all these different networks came through the, not just the Cain Prize, but what the writers themselves decided to do in terms of sort of giving African writing new energy in, I guess it would be between 2000 and 2010, so that's, and now it's, now there are so many other Thurian magazines on the continent, and it's just, you know, so it's just growing in leaps and bounds, the connection that even growing because of the internet online, it's the easiest for those networks to get tighter. Yeah, okay, well that's really interesting, I did not, I mean I would not have connected Kwanee and then the Cain, and so this is really, could there be something there, there is a platform there that has, that is now sprouting into, okay that's, that's, that's interesting to know. How about Maren, can you? Sure, those are fascinating answers, I, you know, the inspiration for this story, you know, again it came from a project that I'm, that I'm working on, and that is in centering, you know, the immigrant refugee and, and displacement experience, it's kind of following that longer inquiry, and so that's, it feels very self-contained in that way, but that doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of networks that have, you know, helped this story and the bigger project along, but I'll say I think what I found really fascinating in even thinking about this conversation was that I think, you know, the process that I went through for publishing this story feels pretty analog, I mailed it in, and, you know, months and months later it was accepted and months and months after that was published in paper, and so what has been really nice about the experience of the Cain Prize is the story got this kind of second life in digital form, and so it's, it's, you know, and just this one story kind of shows you what digital platforms can do, it's connected me in different ways, and I love that our stories have all been shared together through that, through that platform, so, you know, it's been, it's been interesting for me to see that, and then, you know, in terms of, I mean, one of the great things about the possibility of digital, in where I live, there's a community of writers that I'm part of, and, you know, it's just a very much, you know, it's for support, and I mean, just, I think network is very important for writing, it's a solitary thing, and it's also kind of an ambulance field, so having those networks, and then also for workshop and reading work, I think it's just very central, and with the pandemic, having our spaces, you know, kind of no longer physically accessible, being pushed online has been really interesting, because I actually think that it's, it shows you that, you know, what you can't, what you can't let go of, and having that, having that network there, and still surviving and thriving has been, has been lovely, and it's been great to have, you know, the internet there to, to support that. So, sorry everybody, I just need to say something, I'm sitting next to a fish, a fish tank, so it's possible that I have some noise coming through to all of you, there's a live thing right next to me, I'm really sorry about that, but so, okay, Marron, you've talked about how you published your book, I'm fascinated that somebody actually got the manuscript and read it, and you got published, because now we have this feeling of like, oh my god, if I bring a manuscript, then nobody will ever read it. Oh, so that was for publishing the story itself, to the, to the magazine, to Zizba, and, but the book actually was published, so I, it was through the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, and I, you know, I, Danelle Mingustu was one of the judges, and I just love his writing, I know Irene is a fan, we were connecting over all our names, and so, and you know, they had great judges, but when I saw his name, I was just, you know, I really, my thought was, I'd really like him to read my writing and maybe know who I am, I like see some of my stories, I didn't, it wasn't like a bigger ambition than that, I just love the idea of having like my work in his hands, so I submitted, and that was how the story, that's how the collection itself was, or is set to be published, so that'll be in March, and still, when I get off the, our conversational continue editing, try to meet my deadline. Sorry, that's okay, that's good. I'd be interested to hear from you, Irene and Doreen as well, so the power, the dynamics at play, you know, like we have these publishers, the local and global influence that they have on African literature, so isn't like, how has publishing been for you? I'll mute because I don't want my fish to be getting in the way, so maybe Irene and Doreen, please feel free to engage as much as... No, yeah, that's for me, when I started writing, I've been writing creatively fiction and creative non-fiction, I come from a journalism background, so I worked with the CBC for a while, and started to write during a period here, when my post-graduation work permit had expired, and so for a while, while I waited for a decision to be made on my application for permanent residency, I didn't have valid status to do actual work, like gainful employment in the country, but I thought, you know, I've always wanted to write, so perhaps I could try it out, and that was in 2017. So I thought, you know, and this was the first story that came to my mind, I guess because of the incident of my grandmother passing away and that hand on my shoulder, so it was my first fiction, my first sort of delving into writing creative non-writing fiction, and it's a wonderful network here that I have, you know, like Meron mentioned, there's a public library here and there's a writer in residence every once in a while, and you can take your manuscript to them and have them evaluated free of charge, which is, you know, so wonderful, I wish we had something like that in Kampala, and perhaps there is, not very much, but I don't know, I don't know if there is, but that was something wonderful that I tapped into, and yeah, so I loved writing so much and having to connect with people through, because becoming a writer, it changes you, there's a new way you begin to look at the world, I think you become a bit more observant, even online, you don't, and I guess we all don't have a lot of time, you just learn to find the people who, I'm gonna say something that would, you know, make people roll their eyes, but kind of feed your soul, kind of who share your world view or challenge it in a way, so it's how I, I guess there was a shift in my, how I saw the world and what I wanted to do and the sort of goals that I knew that I had, and sort of also the things that I read, it was wonderful, and again, it's, it's of credit, you know, to the community where I live, is that there's no book that I have wanted that's published by an African writer that I haven't been able to get through the public library here, if they don't have it, they'll order it, if they don't, and I'll put things on hold that I, and see that they don't have them, and then, you know, a little while later, they'll say, oh, you see it's in, so I've been able to tap into that and to read voraciously, I read a lot more than I write, a little less now that I'm writing, I'm working on my novel, but I've, you know, reading with the intention of learning, of furthering the craft, and it has helped too, I also wanted to mention the whole, like, two of the three, I wonder if Dorin's, Dorin's, the magazine that published Dorin's story, is it online or is it a physical copy? Because that would make it three magazines that are, the stories that are shortlisted for the Cain Prize this year are on the continent and they're mostly digital, and, you know, so that can, you can see how that has worked in furthering the voice of African writers that there's three magazines on the continent with digital availability so that everybody could read them anywhere, you know, are doing this, and they're publishing African writers and they're creating a space where we can tell our own stories, whereas before we might have read our stories as told through the eyes of maybe settlers or, you know, western writers. Oh, I completely, I mean, that's really interesting that there are these sort of like, I mean, grassroots rather like digital magazines that bring out these magazines, I'd be interested to Dorin to tell us, and I agree that the voice when it comes from somebody from the continent is very different from when it comes from somebody who is an observer, sort of like writing what they think Africans think like, you know, it's a very different experience. I quickly, okay, use Dorin's example of the onion and then the white hair, sort of, look at the hair that was so, these are things that I think only we would sort of like, you use them at home, so then they make sense in that way. So yes, definitely. Go on Dorin. Oh, I just wanted to say in response to Irene's question, yes, Ibuah is a digital magazine, and so it was really good that my stories available globally and two of the other stories are published in digital magazines. I'm not sure if one of them has a print copy as well, but it has really eased the process of submission and the process of reading and that kind of thing. I started writing, and the other question about availability for people to read your work, it's limited, but at least I can mention in Kampala, we have Femwright where they have every Monday they have a reader's writer's club, so both men and women can go there and share short pieces, but of course, that's peer review, which is different from what you experience, the writer in residence, who is sort of an expert. But we do have a number of literary organizations that have been doing a lot of good work here, Ibuah itself, we have the African Writers Trust that has conferences and workshops, my own organization, Mawazo, we've had Femwright, we've had their number, Babishai, Niwe that focuses on poetry, and in Kenya the same. There are a number of different organizations that are really working to support new writers and to support writing on the continent. The issue of course is resources, there's so much more to be done, and for example, the way I started to write, I was living in the U.S. at that time, and I first published in very small magazines around the D.C. area, and then I kept on sending my work to larger and larger magazines, and I took workshops at the writer's center in Bethesda, and then later taught at the writer's center, and finally did my MFA in creative writing at the University of Maryland College Park. So I was privileged in that way to get that sort of training, and I really hope we could get kind of advanced level training long-term, long-form in sub-Saharan Africa. I think the graduate programs right now on the continent are only in South Africa. I'm not quite sure about North Africa, but in terms of, so in South Saharan Africa, many, those who want to study at a graduate level, creative writing, have to go to the U.S. or to Europe, and I think that limits, that limits the problem. And of course, you mentioned publishing, I hope, sorry, I went off. Yes, there is that challenge where if you're writing in English, most of the publishing houses on the continent, I won't speak for every country because it's different from country to country, there are many more publishers in South Africa. Most of the publishing houses focus on textbooks because they have a guaranteed audience. It's very, very hard if you're just dealing with fiction to make ends meet as a publisher, to thrive as a publisher. And so many, many of us tend to look to the UK or to the U.S. for publishers, but that has its positives in terms of the quality of editing, but it has its negatives in terms of having to appeal, to try to appeal to editors and publishers who may not know the lived experience of your stories. But they are good editors out there. And they are, I think people are now getting more and more open to the idea of even though we are publishing in the West, it's not just for a white audience, for example. People have opened and realized that the audience is as diverse and that our perspectives are new and rich and our stories can be told from our perspective. I think it's opening up in terms of attitudes of editors and the amount of Africans publishing in the U.K. has really, really... So, Oka Doreen, I think you went off. Have you frozen now? Okay. Oh, you're back. Sorry, the audio went off and then you froze for a second. Oh, I don't know where I stopped. I was just saying that I think my connection is unstable. If I take off my video, my sound might be better. Can you hear me? Yes, yes, yes. Or maybe you should go. So I was just saying that right now there are a number of their very good writers, African writers being published in the U.S. and the U.K. and the more diverse the voices, the more the market opens up and the better chance for even more new writers, if that makes sense, to get published. Yes, if that makes sense. And we had an email exchange with the three of you and you brought them. So I had not heard about this. Is it the NFT? Which is simply a new way of digital content. I had never... I mean, it really surprised me. I think it's something I want to go and explore and see what I learn about it. I know we don't probably have time to engage with it now. But then I want you guys to think of how publishing digitally maybe gives you more immediacy. Your work is quite immediate and interactive. And you're also able to access the digital community quite easily. Have you seen that to be the case really? Or it's all hype and it's not really the truth. Let me start with you, Irene. No, for sure. I think there's something to be said of also social media platforms that can help bring your work to a wider audience, whether it's published online digitally or in a physical copy of the magazine. Most literary magazines now have a social media presence so that even if you as a writer didn't have much of that or knew how to navigate that world, because it can be challenging and time-consuming that they can sort of do that legwork and put your work out there and so that you could, for example, just retweet something, a magazine where your story is and people could maybe access it through a library near them or if they could afford, you know, purchase it. And as an emerging writer too, you definitely, because writing, like Meron said, it's a very isolating experience. You do it alone and after a while you just want to be able to connect with the world and perhaps talk about the challenges of writing with people who actually do know what those challenges are and can relate. And yeah, so there are such social media spaces and I've found it's a it's a double-edged sword because there are people who are too much engaged in it and I feel, you know, tweeting about every stage of the writing process and I wonder when they get time to actually do any writing, they tweet about it so much. So I find that, so that for me can cut my energy. So I try to, I don't engage with that so much, but I really do like hearing what other people say without myself, which is selfish, I suppose, without me sort of contributing to that. But I love, I feel like I feel seen just this morning someone was writing about how when they were in the garden, working in the garden, that they had so many wonderful ideas for things they could do and then once they came to sit at their desk to actually type out the ideas, there was nothing. And I feel that way too. I feel that way a lot. I do a lot of sort of recreational running and whenever I go out running, if I run for two hours, I can write a novel in my head and finish it yet on the ground. Really, it's taken me five years now going on six and I'm only finishing my debut novel. So there's that. I think you'll be fantastic. You have lots of exciting things. Yes, please, Maren. Well, I was just going to follow up on that because, you know, there's that idea of, you know, the immediacy that you both were talking about in terms of like the story, but there's also the immediacy of form. And I think that's what Irene was also kind of getting at with social media and all of that. When I, years ago, I was an assistant editor at this online publication, The Offing, kind of at its earlier stage. And I was focusing on micros. There are these, and if you look up the submission definition, it's deliberately vague because, you know, the idea is that the writer could invent, you know, the necessary form. But, you know, it's short and you would get pieces that could be like tweetable stories, you know, or poems. And what I, that's, you know, so there's the idea of the, of like an urgent story, but there's also like the kind of urgency of finding a new form to tell a story. And digital space really leaves that room open. You know, there's multimedia that's easier to access digitally. And just the, there's less of a risk. There's you're not, you're not trying to find, you know, that, or claim like that, like very scarce and sometimes expensive real estate of like column line, you know, it's, it's flexible. I've published, I had a very long and pretty experimental story that was published digitally. And I think it, I think it needed to be because I think it was, it was just going to be a risk that I, that a digital journal could take. And so, you know, it felt like a natural home for it. And the immediacy there wasn't in this, I wouldn't necessarily say it was in the story. It wasn't like something that was happening day and not the day after. But, you know, it was a form that I felt really, that I wanted to try to push and see what I could do with that. But in terms of just strict chronological time, my first story was accepted in print. But my first story was published digitally because of that fast turnaround. This is really fascinating. Thank you so much. I'm probably going over time now with the time I was allowed to engage with you guys. I should now invite the public, the audience, if you have any question that you would want to put to our shortlisted authors, please feel free to write that on the Q&A. And I'm sure they'll be very happy to, to engage with that. Yeah. Also like, as long as they're not essay questions that you need to write an essay about and then you want to pick their minds on that, they'll be brilliant. So please, members of the audience, feel free to ask any question that you have. So while the audience is doing this, what do you think of the digital community? So for example, on Twitter, have you had any kind of, any kind of maybe like negative or positive response about your world that you published? Or has it often been very positive? What you've done? Should we start with you, Maren, since you're on the screen? You know, I think I might be like Irene in that I'm not, you know, there's that kind of, that kind of guarding of time that you really have to do when you have a big project that you're working on. And I, especially as, you know, so I feel like that's not a space where I engage as, you know, it's a space maybe more of observation and less of like active engagement for me. I, it has a lot of value, but it's, you know, so I don't know how, I mean, I wouldn't say that I've had any personally, you know, particularly negative experiences or, you know, but what I, I mean, I think it's, it does let you share, I mean, it lets you share your work and connect. And, you know, once you put, once you, when you're writing a story, you know, it's really, it's a, you know, insulated space and it's for you or maybe you share it with a trusted view. And then when you put it into the world, it is nice to see that engagement. Irene, yes. And then Doreen after, thank you. Yeah, I was going to say that I very much feel that this, I don't know what month it is. I think it's November, when a certain community of writers choose, I don't know how successful they are to write a novel in one month. And there's a sort of a hashtag that goes with that and people, and I, I mean, I know I could never do that. So watching that and just actually hearing people say, you know, being in touch with each other and kind of motivating each other and finishing a draft of a novel or work, a longer work in one month. And I, you know, I look at it with admiration, but I know it's not something I ever could accomplish at all. So it's a, so I try to stay away from that. Actually, I try to stay away from, from that, because I know it zaps my creative energy infinitely. So, and I know too that being on social media, you know, it's a system of giving and taking, you also want to be able to give back when people are, you know, to share something of yourself. And so every once in a while, when I publish something, I feel a bit of guilt tweeting about it. It was just like a bit of a crawling out of your hole to do a bit of shameless self-promotion. I don't know how others feel about it, but I do, I do. Sometimes I'll tweet something and actually delete it very quickly and then think about it and go, I can do it. And then I'll tweet it again. But maybe that's just a personality thing. But I do feel like it's important. It's, it's, it's wonderful to be able to see people engaging with your work and, you know, something that you sat with for a long time and worked on over and over again to see people engage with it. Whether it's good criticism or bad, it's always an educating experience. I'm so lucky. I mean, I'm not lucky. I'm just happy that I'm not the only one who disengages, who is not a Twitter person or TikTok or all the rest. And I thought, I actually thought it was a generational thing, but to see these two young writers say the same thing, it is true. I, I feel as if there are so many voices online and so much is being said and so many opinions, then I begin to ask them, who am I as a writer to think I have something special to say or I have an opinion that needs to be heard. You know, when everybody's talking. So it seems, it's easier for me to pretend that others are not talking so that I can talk, which is ridiculous. But it's, first of all, I'd like to say in the, on the, on the African space that I really, you can't really generalize like that. I think it also creates a bigger divide because the majority of people at least in sub-Saharan Africa are rural. Internet is very, very expensive here. And most people use their phones. They don't necessarily use computers. They may use their phones and many, many, many people don't have smartphones. And so it feels like it's a place where it's rewarding those who have. And perhaps there's something about the digital space that is making those who have moved much faster in terms of all the resources that they get than those who don't. So that challenge, I think, then for us is how to not leave the others who are not as digitally, what do you say, who do not have those digital resources, not to leave them behind. And it was quite, it was quite sad during the pandemic here where most of the children who go to private schools were the ones who could continue with online classes who already were privileged. And those in government schools didn't have computers at home or phones at home or things like that. So there's always been this issue of accessibility, is that a word? And the online thing seems to excavate. Is that the word? Makes it worse. But it could also be a solution. It could also be a solution. Again, it points to bad governance. I think if we had good governance, we'd have the structures to make these things available. So it all comes back to those kind of bigger structural issues that we have on the continent. But I don't, I do remember earlier on on Twitter, Teju Cole used to have some, I think he stopped, but he had some really lovely creative pieces on Twitter. And I did like the way it can lend itself to new forms of writing and how podcasts sort of hark back to oral literature, bring back that connection of all the things we listen to and not just print. I find that exciting as well. But as a writer, it is a big waste of time, I mean not a waste of time, I was saying it can very easily. I have to really control myself being one of those who have, you know, internet. I think I completely agree with you and I see exactly what you mean because, so I'm, is it like when we think of, when I think of my country, I'm from Tanzania. And for us, like reading is a luxury because similar to what you said earlier Dorian, people buy books because it's text books. Or maybe, maybe it was you everyone who said that, like they only buy textbooks because textbooks are for school, then you're, is it like you only buy what you need. So sort of like getting short stories or novels is a luxury. So reading is a luxury for some. And digital reading is even more of a luxury. And I think you're right. I mean, probably up to our government to do something about that. And so we are coming to the end of our section together, but I've got two question. There's one from Moodu Keyengi, oh hello Moodu. So Moodu actually happens to be from Uganda. And he's writing on maybe, so what he says that, so Irene, your story has a strong sense of place whether of Uganda or Canada. Does the ubiquitous character, no ubiquitous character of the digital platform help to negotiate the two places. How do you relate with home while writing when you're away? Sorry, ubiquitous. I couldn't say it, I'm sorry Moodu. That's a wonderful question. Yes, I am. It's bizarre every time I get an idea to write a story and I sit down, it's just almost inevitably the characters are Ugandan and they speak my language and they look like me. And so it's a challenge publishing, you know, writing about home, Uganda, writing about Uganda and then publishing in Canada because you know then who am I writing for. But part of what has been wonderful with this prize, it's my first year being first time being shortlisted for the King prize is that the day, a few years, a few days ago, I got to be on a panel with Doreen and with Jennifer, the editor of the writer of Chintu and it was the highlight. It's so far it's been the highlight of my career as a writer. I could not believe like there's so many people on the platform and Ugandans are particularly wonderful about being exuberant about joy, like they're very joyful people. And so just for me to be sitting on a panel with Doreen and Jennifer, it was wonderful. So yeah, it's a challenge. There's a like I said, you know, there are benefits and there are losses. It's been easy for me to learn how to write being surrounded by a community of writers and having access to resources that I probably might not have had in Uganda, but also being able to share the space now with accomplished writers. And yeah, I don't know, I kind of, I forgot what the question was, writing about home while I'm away from home. Yeah. And then like I think he's looking at is it like how, how everything can be present and then it's found everywhere. So is it like the character of digital platforms is ubiquitous as in like it can be here, but there, but everywhere. Does that really help you with your writing? For sure. And that's what, that's a quality that I admire in the stories that I admire. The idea that thought is perhaps the only way of time travel able to be able to do as human beings that I can be sitting here in Canada and writing about home and feeling very present in the, I grew up near a forest in Uganda in Chevalier, near Chevalier Forest. My village used to be pushed, you know, right up against the forest. So the forest was my backyard. So I, I'm very much a forest person. I'm an animal person and they make appearances in every story I write, whether it's in Canada or set in Uganda is that I always have animals because I grew with animals and interact with them in a way that perhaps most people might you know, good interactions and bad ones. One of my tasks after school was to guard our gardens because baboons would uproot our potatoes. So I had to, you know, run around with the sticks and chase the baboons away. But when, and then during that time when I was growing up, that was I hated doing that. I didn't want to be sitting around fighting with baboons. But when I write about them now, it's with a nostalgia with a, with a long, a bit of longing. Maybe it's something that we all experience, whether we've moved away or not, just moving up and down in the middle of society is that you get to be very nostalgic about childhood and, and for me, leaving Uganda and writing about it from a distance, I guess the danger becomes overly sort of romanticizing it because Uganda is a very, very much a real place with difficulties like Doreen was explaining. So I can't say that everything is good because everything is not good. So I have to be aware of that when I write about it, even though I write about it in glowing terms, I have to be aware the story itself needs to be aware at its core that Uganda is a real, real place. So the Uganda that I portray in the stories has to be as real as the Uganda in the actual Uganda. But also the understanding is that Uganda for me home is not, it's not physical place. It's not, it's the people that I love. It's my relationships with the animals in the forest that I grew up with. So that being home then centers the story, makes it draw strongly from the characters and the feeling as opposed to generally the physical geographical place. I think that's fantastic. Yes, that's a really good answer. Thank you so much. It makes me think of, I grew up in a town called Moragoro and next to our house there was a huge baobab tree and everybody thought like sort of like the devil lived there. People are scared of the baobab tree and later I remember like my parents told me like oh the plot of land with a baobab tree has been bought and the person came and dug out the baobab tree and I cried. It was like what? Although in my childhood it was this oh my god the baobab tree. But once it was removed then it becomes nostalgic and now a baobab tree decorated in the house because it's just the tree of my childhood. We have a question from Angelica Vazquez. So first of all she says thank you very much to all of you for your beautiful readings and her question goes to Doreen. So she thanks you for your talk on the digital inequalities and who has a voice and who does not. So she wants to ask about your experience of writing and connecting during COVID. I think the second part she's asking all of us perhaps but I could go. Are you able to hear me? Yeah. I just want to say something quickly about what Irene was talking about that the the the writing when you are away from home because I lived in the States for 15 years where I started to write and then I came back home and I realized strangely enough it is not that different. I had thought that because I was away from the physical place I was writing about there might be something missing or there might be a gap but now that I have come now that I'm back perhaps because I've been writing historical fiction we are always removed from the physical space in the process of writing because we are translating it at its I am you're translating it through your imagination onto the page. So you're already taking a step away from the physical space. So yes when we are here we smell the sounds we we you know all the five senses are working the accents you hear them but there is that process almost of this you could call it displacement or where you take that step and absorb it in your mind and then put it on the page or regard and that is the same almost as not being there physically. Does that make sense? So you're not missing much is what I'm saying even if you have not lived in the country at all but about COVID and writing thank you for that question Angelica Angelica I hope I've got the name correct um you know it didn't disrupt me that much apart from asking myself once in a while whether what I'm doing is really urgent and useful when people are dying around me last year it wasn't so bad we had a very light first wave but this time around now that the Delta variant has come it's it's it's really we're dying people are dying and writing for me has always been an escape and so I am not ready to engage directly in my writing with COVID my lifestyle hasn't changed much I work from home I live at home so with the lockdown I am at still at home except my son is with me but the difference I think is that I still have more reason to escape from my daily reality and I'm lucky I have that privilege I'm lucky that I still have work I'm lucky that I many artists don't have had you know because we live in a gig economy have not had work to keep on doing their artistic work the only thing that was a bit affected was I had a play the title story of Tropical Fish was is being staged here in Kampala and of course you've got to do that in person meet the actors the directors and that we've tried to do some hybrid rehearsals but it's not working out as well so we are uncertain when it will actually be staged so that has been difficult but I think we here I don't want to exaggerate but we have lived with uncertainty I was a I was a young child during Idi Amin's rule and talk about uncertainty so when other people are panicking I in I would read in the west oh my god we don't we don't have you know toilet paper you know it wasn't a big deal it's like okay it and it aids in terms of being flexible sorry maybe I've gone off point let me stop there that was really that was that that was brilliant the toilet paper made me laugh I couldn't understand it either but there we are um okay Maren maybe if you could just quickly tackle the issue of writing in COVID and also maybe if you wasn't answering this question by Nuzhat Abbas who says that Doreen your thought on writing a displacement in translation is so brilliant so she's curious for all of you now how do you grapple with translating experience that may take place in another language into English so I think it's like I really have quite a bit of that in your in your writing especially and by the way I read or here you are I've started a feminist press focused on displacement in translation in Canada I'll be in touch so Nuzhat Abbas will be in touch but yeah Maren if you could just start by telling us about COVID and also how do you grapple with translating the Ethiopian experience into English well I mean I think that the the COVID I agree with what Doreen was saying about um having kind of discovered or deepened my gratitude for the role of writing in my life because you know it really um it's it's something it's that it's kind of this stability of writing it's this kind of rhythm that did not it didn't get disrupted for me during COVID and it just became very grounding to have that and you know especially with a longer project you're you're seeing the same characters they're they're they're very real to us and how we've developed them for so long so that has has just been I think it's made me really appreciate what writing really is for me and what how much it gives back to me and that's really outside of being of like publishing or anything else you know just it's like just basic presence as part of as part of my life um with um writing displacement um that is a very difficult and question and it's it's interesting because I'm tackling it both in novel form and in story form and I feel like um for me it's really just about for me it's just a a way of inquiring and looking at questions that um so I don't think I'm trying to come to any conclusions I think I'm just trying to raise um questions really for myself and um you know explore through narrative things that I don't know how to explore in other ways or that I haven't found answers to in other ways um so you know in stories kind of you know they have maybe you get to tackle one or two questions or you can layer a few um whereas a novel um is much more um you know it's splintered and it kind of allows you to um be a lot messier with the kind of inquiry that you're doing um so uh it's a it's a good question I I think I probably don't have a great answer for it but I'll say that um what writing does for me is just help you know it helps me kind of take the paths of the questions that I'm I'm trying to um figure out for myself that's very wonderful I already go on and then to read yes yeah I was going to say yeah for sure the best you can do is is observe and hopefully uh by meditating over a long period of time on a specific subject you you might ask questions that nobody else has asked before um on the subject of writing uh translating it's a yes it's one that I especially for this story is that because the grandmother character does not speak English so I struggled with trying to present her voice in a way that would be true to Ruchiga which is what she spoke and I do struggle with that really because my characters in my head they speak to me in my language in Ruchiga and so when I'm trying to write that in English English is just such a clean precise language just like cuts through everything and flutters it down it's like I know what I want to say but English is the it's just hard for me to navigate sometimes just the way that it works just the way it is um because my language is like such a bodily language and it's it's kind of spicy too like over the top almost and it's hard to put that in in English because which is more more you know straight straight and clean but I yeah so it's one of those difficulties that I have with writing in because a lot of the time I spend a lot of time translating things into English and lately I've kind of got tired of it and I just write dialogue sometimes just in Ruchiga and go with it and then sometimes maybe I will have an idea of how to say that in English in a way that remains true to the story and if I don't I leave it that way and I kind of fight with the editors about because I grew up reading English you know what I mean and uh some things you can get through context people like you have you you have to I think it's a way also and I feel like readers are readers are smart we don't give them a lot of credit like readers have read Shakespeare they are going to understand what I write like you know if they're will if they're the kind of reader who is who wants to wants to challenge like you know and it's a way for the reader to also bring themselves to a story do a little bit of work I love reading stories that challenge me and so I write with the hope with the hope that that there are things you can get through context so that I'm not watering down too much and at the same time I'm not writing to explain any worlds to anybody I'm writing to present to show hopefully and you can do these things by because these most of these emotions are universal like loss the way that loss presents itself in my body is perhaps the same way it presents itself in somebody else's body so if I'm able to be really specific I can make them feel it that's that's very interesting we're slightly going over time maybe we'll go five minutes over just very very quickly oh that's gonna quickly add you know when you're translating as well it's the same thing is in that you always think of the audience and you always think do I want to domesticate everything for them and make it all plain English and perfect or do I want to decolonize my my work and make it look this is a foreign work it reads foreign and you know people people people explore the world that way if I can quickly have durin and then right away if you could also durin sort of like the flavia nakitende who says thank you so much for everything it was more of a motivational talk for me oh so well done guys I felt like maybe my writing was leading nowhere but I'm going to be patient and believe that I'm going far so her name is Flavia nakitende and she wants to ask you if there's specifics or set number of proof readers required before publishing your work so maybe durin if you can quickly tell us about translation and about proof readers and we'll start to wrap up because I think we've already gone over time I don't think I mean I know thank you um quickly about the language issue I think somehow in that question is always the assumption that English is a foreign language and I know what I might be saying might be a bit controversial but I grew up speaking English I grew up in Entebbe I grew up I grew up speaking English even at home somehow you know my our parents would speak to us in Runyankore and Richiga and we answer back in English because of the education system so it's not always that when one is writing one is translating perhaps a translation comes from Ugandan English the way the way the way we flavor it with with the information from our from my own language although you know and so that that makes me speak what we call English or or English Ugandan English and I try to write that way so I recommend everybody should read Jennifer Bakumpi's latest novel First Woman where she has no apologies about trying to clean up her English but writes it the way we it almost seems like a direct translation I think even Monebo Bodhi by Tithidangaremba writes the same way because you know English has been under coordinate for so so long that it's no longer you know I think we've made it hours in many in many powerful ways expanded it I remember or you read stories from all over the commonwealth you know English has been enriched by you know Caribbean English and in India Asia everywhere but the novel set in northern Uganda I do know that the characters were speaking actually most of the time and I don't speak actually and so to try and create that flavor I couldn't pretend I couldn't pretend that I know actually and that I'm going to so I just know that I am the channel that it is not I am not giving you an accurate version I think that's where the fiction comes in I'm taking liberties with the language and playing with it and perhaps someone from actually would say oh no would never say that and I'll say okay well then you write your book I definitely the language will be contested but I think that's okay I think we have to play around with these things a little and not think so much about accuracy it's about are you able to depict or create that emotion uh yeah are you able to to say what you want to say not are you accurate okay Flavia thank you for your question I don't think there's a strict number of proof readers it really depends where what you're writing about where you want to publish it how much work needs to be done on it so there's some for who write and and they don't really need to revise it up but it depends if you're talking about editing versus proof reading so I can't give you one official strict answer except to say it depends but just keep on revising it as much as possible I always show my work to readers and then I show an editor and then the publisher is the one who finally gets a proof reader I hope that is a quick answer yeah I think that's probably what everybody does can I just thank you all so much for your time today you have all been amazing I think I agree with the person who said this has been like a motivational talk and thank you so much for for for for for for attending and for speaking so well and I wish you the very very best tomorrow when the winner will be announced Monday Monday on Monday oh on Monday okay I'm meant to be there everything is a blur now with COVID that's my excuse but thank you so much and yeah just brilliant writing thank you very much everybody else thank you very much and the recording would be on Facebook I believe so as Facebook as well as on on Twitter and everywhere on digital platforms where Irene can nice can go and explore I'm just teasing you thank you very much everybody have a good evening bye thank you Maron bye Doreen bye thank you so much