The Pan-African Writers Association (PAWA) is delighted to announce the Pan-African Writers International Literature Conference. The Conference this year will be in honour of the life and works of Nobel Prize Laureate, Abdurazak Gurnah. The conference will be held from 22 to 24 November 2023, at Makerere University, Kampala.
The event is organised by IAF members PAWA and FERMITE (Uganda Women Writers Association), in collaboration with Makerere University and with the support of development partners. The conference is expected to host high profile African writers and other industry figures, both from within and outside Africa. The event will include keynote lectures, paper presentations, panel discussions, book launches, exhibitions and other cultural activities.
The theme of the conference is Celebrating the life and works of Abdulrazak Gurnah for the future of African literature.
Professor Gurnah was born in 1948 in Zanzibar, Tanzania, and later relocated to the United Kingdom in the 1960s during the Zanzibar revolution. The citation for his award stated that it was for “his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fates of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.” His story of dislocation at a young age is the story of many young Africans, his story of then is a story of today.
Abdulrazak Gurnah is a novelist and an academic, Emeritus Professor of English and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent. Some of his notable works include Paradise (1994), shortlisted for the Booker Prize and Whitbread Prize, Desertion (2005) and By the Sea (2001), longlisted for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He is author of 10 novels and many short stories and essays.
Subthemes include:
- Abdulrazak Gurnah’s life in perspective
- The works of Abdulrazak Gurnah
- Migration and African Literature
- Literature in African languages
- African literature and publishing
- The Nobel Prize and African literature
- Literature and modern technology
- Literature and cultural technology
- Indigenous languages in African literature
- The role of translation in African literature
- Literature and climate change
- Literature, peace building and security
- Love, romance and betrayal in Abdulrazak’s works
- African literature and artificial intelligence
- Decolonisation in African literature
- Identity and the diaspora in African literature
- African oral literature (orature) and decoloniality
If you want to participate in the conference, please send your papers to:
The deadline for submission of full papers is 25 September 2023. Please include your abstract on the first page of your paper.
For further details please contact:
- Prof Egara Kabaji (Chairman, Central Planning Committee – CPC – egarakabaji@gmail.com)
- Ms Hilda Twongyeirwe (Executive Director FEMRITE & Secretary, CPC – twongye@gmail.com)
- Dr Wale Okediran (PAWA Secretary General & Member CPA- pawahouse@gmail.com)