Doreen Baingana
Doreen Baingana, born in Entebbe, Uganda, says that history drew her into creative writing. Baingana’s debut collection of short stories, ‘Tropical Fish: Stories out of Entebbe’ (2005), is about a Ugandan girl navigating adolescence. Tropical Fish won the 2006 Commonwealth Prize for First Book, Africa Region. Baingana has written two children’s books: ‘Gamba the Gecko Wants to Drum’ (2010), and ‘My Fingers are Stuck’ (2010). She has also penned many stories as: ‘Hunger, in Seventh Street Alchemy’ (2005) and ‘Christianity Killed the Cat’ (2009).
She has won an Association of Writers and Writing Programmes award for short fiction, an Emerging Writer’s Fellowship from The Writer’s Centre, and a Washington Independent Writers Short Fiction Prize. She has twice been a finalist for the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2004 and 2005.
Doreen Baingana was managing editor at Storymoja, a publishing house in Kenya, and a judge for the Hurston/Wright Prize for Debut Fiction, the Golden Baobab Prize for Children’s Literature, and the 2013 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. She also received the Miles Morland Scholarship for African Writers in 2014.
Saïdou Alceny Barry
Saïdou Alceny Barry is a teacher, writer and press critic. Since 2007, he has worked with the daily ‘L'Observateur Paalga’, for which he runs the section ‘Projecteur’. Winner of the prize for best art critic article from the ‘Carrefour des arts plastic de Ouagadougou’ in 2012 and first laureate of the Lompolo for best journalistic theater critic in 2013. He contributes to several culture and art journals and blogs and acts as an advisor and moderator for journalistic and artistic projects and workshops.
He was engaged as a mentor and art critic in the KUNSTRAUM226 project, a temporary exhibition space, of the Goethe-Institut Ouagadougou between 2018 and 2020.
Edwige Renée Dro
Edwige Renée Dro is a writer, literary translator and literary activist from Côte d’Ivoire. In 2014, she was named as a laureate for the Africa39 project. She was also a PEN International New Voices award judge in 2015 and on the judging panel of the Etisalat Prize for Literature in 2016. Her writings have been published at Harper Collins, Myriad Editions, Bloomsbury among others. She is the co-founder of Abidjan Lit, a collective that seeks to put books at the center of lives and at the heart of cities. Other literary ventures with which she has been involved include Jalada and Writivism. She was awarded a Morland Writing Scholarship in 2018 and will be a resident at the Iowa International Writing Program in 2021. In March 2020, she set up 1949: the library of women's writing from Africa and the black world, in Yopougon (Abidjan). The mission of the library is to unearth and amplify the contributions of black and African women in order to inspire present and future generations.
Kientega Pingdéwindé Gérard (KPG)
Kientega Pingdéwindé Gérard, commonly known as KPG, comes from the blacksmith caste and son of a speaker of masks. He forges his repertoire from his various family traditions and adapts it to the contemporary world. It is the moment when the listening, the speech and the song intertwine, collide, create a soothing energy, that of the fantastic universe of the red earth of the country of the honest men ... Silver medalist in the discipline "Tale" at the 6th Games of La Francophonie in Beirut; he participated in the Place de la Francophonie during the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games.
Wangui wa Goro
Wangui Wa Goro is a Kenyan academic, activist and social critic, translator and writer. As a recognized intellectual, she is interested in the development of African languages and literatures and regularly contributes to the promotion of literary translation on the international scale through public positions written and oral on the subject. Wangui Wa Goro is a pioneer who has lived and taught in different parts of the world, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany and South Africa. She has worked in local administrations, as well as in the world of human sciences in the UK and in international development contexts.
Monique Ilboudo
Monique Ilboudo is a woman of literature, politician, lawyer and human rights activist from Burkina Faso. She studied law at the University of Ouagadougou and holds a PhD in private law at the University Paris-Est-Créteil-Val-de-Marne. A fervent actress of Burkinabè civil society, Monique Ilboudo was appointed Secretary of State for the Promotion of Human Rights in 2000. In June 2002, she was appointed Minister for the Promotion of Human Rights until 2008.
Monique Ilboudo has written several articles and books, and is one of the major figures in francophone African literature. She is the author of the column 'Female plural' in the Burkinabé newspaper L'Observateur Paalga and in 1992, she receives the Grand Prix of Burkina for the Best Novel for 'Le Mal de peau'. Her latest book 'So far from my life' which has 130 pages through which Monique Ilboudo takes a singular and informed look at Burkinabe society.
Étienne Minoungou
Étienne Minoungou is a Burkinabe comedian, storyteller, director, playwright and cultural entrepreneur. After studying sociology at the University of Ouagadougou and drama at UNEDO, this versatile artist teaches French for a few years in Ziniare. At the turn of the 2000s, he chose to devote himself entirely to his passion: the theater. After having been artistic director of the Théâtre de la Fraternité in Ouagadougou, Etienne Minoungou founded the company Falinga in 2000.
In 2002, he launched the first residencies of African scriptwriting and theater creation in Ouagadougou, ‘Les Récréâtrales’, which brings together some one hundred artists for two to three months. These residencies attempt to explore a new approach to dramatic creation in Africa, with a focus on joint text and staging.
Troy Onyango
Troy Onyango is a Kenyan writer, editor and lawyer. His work has been published in Prairie Schooner, Doek!, Wasafiri, Isele Magazine, Johannesburg Review of Books, AFREADA, Ebedi Review, Nairobi Noir, Caine Prize Anthology (Redemption Song & Other Stories), Kalahari Review and Transition among others. The winner of the inaugural Nyanza Literary Festival Prize and first runner-up in the Black Letter Media Competition, he has also been shortlisted for the Short Story Day Africa Prize, the Brittle PaperAwards, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. An alumnus of the Caine Prize Workshop, Miles Morland Workshop, Jalada Workshop, Goethe Workshop and the Kwani?-SLS Workshop, he has also been a writer-in-residence at the Ebedi Writers Residency in Nigeria. He graduated from the University of Nairobi with a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B) degree and completed his MA in Creative Writing with distinction from the University of East Anglia, where he was a recipient of the Miles Morland Foundation Scholarship. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of Lolwe.
