International Women's Day: A look of some of our favourite women writers

As we celebrate International Women’s Day, we appreciate some of the amazing women we have worked with in the last few years. At Afritondo, we champion the works of African women and will continue to do so.

Here are the profiles and works of some world-leading African women writers that we have had the good fortune to work with.

Edwige Renée Dro

Côte d’Ivoire

Edwige is a writer, a literary translator, and a literary activist from Côte d’Ivoire. She was identified in 2014 by the Hay Festival as a writer “with the potential and talent to define trends in the development of literature from Africa and the diaspora”.

Edwige has judged and facilitated many writing competitions including the 2021 Afritondo Short Story Prize. She has also mentored many other young creatives in the fields of creative writing and literary translation.

Her writings have been published by Bloomsbury and Harper Collins and in magazines such as Popula and This is Africa.

Megan Ross

South Africa

Megan is a writer, poet and graphic designer. She has received critical acclaim for both her short fiction and poetry. Megan is the 2017 Brittle Paper Award for Fiction recipient, one of the 2016 Short Story Day Africa Award winners, and an Iceland Writers Retreat Alumnus. Her first book, a collection of poems called Milk Fever, was published by uHlanga in 2018.

She was a judge in the inaugural Afritondo Short Story Prize in 2020.

You can read her 2017 award-winning short story, Farang, here.

Gloria Mwaniga Minage

Kenya

Gloria is the winner of the 2021 United Nations African Land Policy Centre’s Short Story Competition on Land Governance and a recipient of the 2019 Miles Morland Writing Scholarship. Her work has been published in The White Review, The Johannesburg Review of Books, Munyori Literary Journal and Ebedi Review. For over ten years, Gloria has published book reviews and author interviews with The East African and the Nation newspapers in Kenya.

Gloria has judged literary prizes like the Hamza El-Rufai Short Story Prize, the Afritondo Short Story Prize , and 100words Africa flash fiction competition.

You can read her story “How Much Is that Doggie in the Window” here.

Desta Haile

Eritrea | UK

Desta won the 2021 Afritondo Short Story Prize for her story Ethio-Cubano. She is a multilingual British-Eritrean writer and educator with a background in intercultural communication, social justice and the performing arts. In 2020 Desta won To Speak Europe in Different Languages at Babel Festival of Literature and Translation, a writing competition organised by Asmara-Addis Literary Festival (In Exile), Specimen Press, and the European Cultural Foundation for her story York to Tehran.

Her passion project, Languages through Music, was awarded a BOZAR Afropolitan Forum grant for its innovation, and has developed workshops and resources for festivals like Africa Utopia at Southbank Centre. As a musician, she composed the UNESCO Green Citizens campaign song and has worked with artists like Joe Bataan, Zap Mama, and Baloji. She holds an MA in Black British Writing from Goldsmiths, University of London. Desta is currently the Deputy Director of the Royal African Society.

You can read her short story, York To Tehran, here.

Davina Kawuma

Uganda

Davina was shortlisted for the 2020 Afritondo Short Story Prize for her short story, Touch Me Not. Her lovely review of Yellow Means Stay should be read by every book lover!

She has received training in fiction writing from workshops and mentorships run by the African Writers Trust, the British Council, the Caine Prize, Storymoja, the Uganda Women Writers Association, and the Dutch, Swedish and American embassies in Uganda. Her short story, “Of Birds and Bees”, was shortlisted for the 2018 Short Story Day Africa Prize.

You can read her short story, Coming of Age, written for the Ake Arts & Book Festival here.

Hannah Onoguwe

Nigeria

Hannah’s short story Yellow Means Stay (which became the anthology’s titular story) was shortlisted for the 2020 Afritondo Short Story Prize. Her work has appeared in several literary magazines, including Litro, The Missing Slate, Cassava Republic, African Writer, The Kalahari Review, Lawino, The Stockholm Review and Brittle Paper.

She was longlisted for the Saraba Manuscript Prize and is one of the contributing authors to the speculative fiction anthology Imagine Africa 500. Wine and Water, published by Bahati Books, is a collection of her short stories available on Amazon and Okadabooks. She lives in Bayelsa.

You can read her short story, Breaching the distance, here.