Pilgrimages on CNN

In an ambitious drive to promote African writing, 14 African writers have visited different cities across the continent to produce a series of travel books. The Pilgrimages project claims it will produce the biggest-ever collection of African travel writing by African writers . . . 

Read the rest here.

Panel Discussion at Northwestern University

 Doreen Baingana, Benjamin Kwakye and Bayo Ojikutu

The Launch of AGNI 72: Photos

L/R: Rose-Innes, Matambo, Baingana, Ifowodo, Habila and Osondu

Interview with Washington City Paper

Baingana says she’ll have to draw on the sounds, tastes, and sights of Hargeisa: the buzzing flies, the succulent goat meat, the glisten of its whitish-yellow sand. In D.C., she intends to compare her memories to those of Somali immigrants. “I’m going to ask them about their lives: immigration, integration, how they are connected with their home country and how they keep those connections,” Baingana says.

Read the interview here.

Doreen Baingana: Profile

Photo: Jerry Riley

Doreen Baingana is the Ugandan author of Tropical Fish: Stories out of Entebbe, which won the AWP Short Fiction Award and the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Book, 2006. She has also won a Washington Independent Writers Fiction Prize, an Emerging Writer’s Fellowship from the Writer’s Center, and was a finalist twice for the Caine Prize for African Writing. Her stories and essays have appeared in journals in such as Glimmer Train, African American Review, Chelsea, Callaloo, The Guardian (UK), Chimurenga and Kwani. She has a law degree from Makerere University and an MFA from the University of Maryland and was a Writer-in-Residence there and a Bread Loaf Writers Conference Fellow. She worked for ten years at VOA and has led creative writing workshops in the US, Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda. She is the managing editor of Storymoja, a Kenyan publishing house that organizes the Storymoja Hay Festival. She lives in Nairobi with her son.

Three Beautiful Covers for One Book!

These are the covers for the South African edition, also distributed in East Africa. I was surprised when my editor showed me three covers, but now I love them! The artwork representing the three sisters is by Mustafa Maluka.  

Readings in the US in November 2010

 I will visit the US in November 2010 to research my Pilgrimages book and for a series of readings.

First stop, The Writer's Center, Bethesda, MD, on November 5th for the Story/Stereo. See details here.

Next, Boston University on November 10th for the launch of AGNI 72, Portfolio of African Fiction, which includes an excerpt from my novel-in-progress. See details here.

Then I'll head to Northwestern University on November 12th for a panel discussion on Migration and Mobility. See details here.

On November 17th, I'll read at College of St. Benedict, MN (brrr!). See details here. I'll be a guest writer at this college and it's partner, St. John's University, for two weeks.

Last stop, the Miami Book Fair on the 20th and 21st of November. Watch this space for the program.

Hope to see you at one of these events.

Short Story in AGNI

An excerpt from Doreen's novel-in-progress is appearing in AGNI's African Portfolio of Fiction.

Pilgrimages

Doreen was one of the 14 writers who took part in the Chinua Achebe Center's Pilgrimages project. Read about her experience in Hargeisa here.  And here's a report of her visit on the Somaliland Press website.

Lost in Los Angeles: A Graphic Novel

Blogger Jamie McCarthy draws a graphic novel of Lost in Los Angeles, one of the stories collected in Tropical Fish.