UGANDAN
PUBLISHER AND WRITERS HAVE SO MANY STORIES TO TELL
BY Margaretta
wa Gacheru (written September 28, 2017)
Nyana K took
a big risk last year when she took a leap of faith and went from being a
blogger about books to becoming an actual book publisher in her own right.
But it wasn’t
the first time Nyana had taken risks with her career. She’d been preparing as
an undergrad in Literature and Communications at Makerere University for a full
time job as a journalist. In her first year alone, she’d started out writing feature
stories on a free-lance basis for The New Vision newspaper. She was so
successful, in fact, that once she graduated she was given a full-time position
at the paper.
But already
she had her sights set on greener harvest fields/pastures. And so, when she had
the chance, she moved over to The Daily Monitor where she quickly proved her
editorial skills/prowess. In no time she’d won a three month fellowship to do
an internship in sub-editing at the home base of The Nation Media Group in
Nairobi.
Returning to
Kampala and the Monitor after that, Nyana soon realized she wasn’t really cut
out to be a sub-editor.
“I confess I
found the newsroom grueling,” she told Business Daily. “Besides, I wanted more
time to do my writing.”
So to stay
afloat financially, she quit the Monitor and got a job with the Madvani Group, doing
public relations work for them while still writing and exploring other options,
one of which was to start a literary blog in 2014.
Initially,
she did her blogging as a sideline since her PR work was a full-time affair.
But gradually she found working and writing for her blog far more exciting/fulfilling
than PR.
“I called it
‘Sooo Many Stories’ (with three o’s in the ‘so’),” she said.
“It involved
my attending book launches and literary talks, interviewing writers and publishers,”
she added.
Considering
herself both a writer for and editor of her blog, it was in the latter capacity
that she came to Kenya to attend a workshop run by Kwani? specifically for
editors.
“It was
toward the end of that workshop that as a group of [ambitious] writer-editors,
we decided to start our own online literary journal. That was how Jalada was
born. I was one of the first members of the board,” she added.
That was
when Nyana was also introduced to the African Writers Trust, a group that,
among other things, sponsored fellowships for young African editors.
“I won one
of those fellowships and went to Cape Town where I interned at Modjoyi Books, a
small feminist publisher run by Colleen Higgs,” she said.
“Colleen
operated her publishing business out of her home. That showed me that someone didn’t
need necessarily to start off big. Colleen started small and already had 80
authors whose works she published,” said Nyana who admits Colleen’s example
gave her courage to go home and start up her own book business.
Currently,
she’s just publishing two Ugandan authors, the political poet and lawyer Peter
Kagayi and Philippa Namutebi Kabali-Kagwa, a poet and novelist. They both came
with her last week to Kenya to attend the Storymoja Literary and Arts Festival,
run a workshop and promote their books.
“It was
Colleen who got me started,” said Nyana gratefully. “She gave me rights to sell
Philippa’s book, ‘Flame and Song’ within East Africa while she covers the rest
of Africa.”
Peter who is
both a poet and performing artist had been bugging her for some time to help
him publish his poetry and promote his book entitled ‘The Headline that Morning,
and other poems’.
“Peter is
also a spoken word artist who likes to perform his poetry, so I helped him
produce the DVD for ‘The Headline that Morning,” Nyana added.
So now she’s
in the risky business of publishing, but Nyana isn’t in doubt about having done
the right thing. “Right now, I’m only publishing Ugandan writers,” she said.
But what she
knows is that her countrymen and women have ‘so many stories’ to tell, she’s
made it her job to get those stories out in the public domain both in Uganda
and in the wider world.
Last
Saturday at the Storymoja Fete, Peter and Philippa performed a literary
dialogue based on an exchange of their poetry and her prose.
“Their
performance felt like a revelation for Kenyans, so we’ll be back next year,
bringing more books and Ugandan writers to what we found to be an appreciative
Kenyan book-loving audience,” Nyana added.
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