Pan-African Writers Association to host International Literature Conference
The event scheduled for March 2023 at Makerere University, Uganda, will be in celebration the works of Nobel Prize Laurete Abdulrazak Gurnahat.
The Pan-African Writers Association (PAWA) is hosting an International Literature Conference to honor the Life and Works of renowned Tanzanian-born cultural activist and Nobel Laureate Professor Abdurazak Gurnah. The conference is scheduled between 23rd to 25th March 2023 at the Makerere University, Uganda.
An Emeritus Professor of English and Postcolonial Literature at the University of Kent, Abdulrazak Gurnah is the fifth Black writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. He has authored many short stories, essays, and 10 novels. 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 and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Abdurazak 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 2021 Nobel Prize 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.”
Professor Gurnah is considered a cultural activist, advocating against insensitive publishing practices, such as, the practice of italicizing or glossarizing words that are in another language. While his first language is Swahili, he uses English as his literary language with Swahili, Arabic and German words and phrases in most of his writings. His advocacy and approach to cultural issues through his works has famed him in the global sphere of cultural activism.
He says that he has had to push back against publishers who continue the practice of italicizing words or putting them in a glossary simply because the words are in another language. As academic Hamid Dabashi notes, Gurnah “is integral to the manner in which Asian and African migratory and diasporic experiences have enriched and altered English language and literature.
The Pan African Writers Association in collaboration with FEMRITE and Makerere University Literature Department are cohosting the conference which is expected attract over 300 top African Writers and other literary dignitaries, from within and outside Africa. Professor Abdulrazak Gurnah will be the Special Guest of Honor.
The event will be held alongside have keynote lectures, paper presentations, panel discussions, book launches and exhibitions as well as, other cultural activities.
