After taking a three-year hiatus, the initiative is back for its 10th anniversary and a relaunch of its activities, including literary festivals, online mentoring, and literary award ceremonies among others.
By Hope Ibiale
The Pan-African organisation, Writivism Literary Initiative, has announced the relaunch of its activities. After taking a three-year hiatus, the initiative is back for its 10th anniversary and a relaunch of its activities, including literary festivals, online mentoring, literary award ceremonies, and many others. All these activities will be conducted online and administered by Writivism’s latest managing editor, Ugandan poet, Tramaine Suubi.
While speaking about the relaunch, Bwesigye Bwa Mwesigire, one of the organisation’s co-founders said, “After Writivism’s three-year hiatus that started after our literary festival held in Kampala in August 2019, we are transferring our work to an exclusively digital plane and expanding eligibility for the prizes to include the African Diaspora. This can be partly explained by direct personal experience of the increasing insecurity in Uganda that makes it difficult to guarantee the safety of staff and everyone involved in our activities.”
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Launched in 2012, the Writivism Literary Initiative was created by Mwesigire, Naseemah Mohamed, and Kyomuhendo A. Ateenyi of the Centre for African Cultural Excellence (CACE) in Kampala, Uganda. Since their creation, they have supported emerging African writers by conducting annual literary festivals, mentorships, literary awards, and many other channels that have helped writers such as Saaleha Idrees Bamjee, Anthea Paelo, Pemi Aguda, and many others.
Writivism will also relaunch three literary prizes in honour of its 10th anniversary. Winners of each category will walk away with a thousand dollars, while the shortlisted writers will get fifty dollars. The guidelines for submitting stories, essays, and poems for the Writism literary prize will be announced soon, alongside the timeline of other activities.