Foreword

It’s a special kind of privilege to be able to help others realise their dreams. Publishers regularly fulfil that role and in this case the British Council too, through this happy partnership with Mallory International. New African Writing is an attempt to bring more of the incredibly vibrant writing coming out of Africa to a wider public. It is based on a very successful programme of creative writing called Crossing Borders. Since 2001 nearly 200 talented young writers from Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe have participated in this distance leaning creative writing programme delivered by the British council in collaboration with the University of Lancaster in the UK and many African partners. Crossing Borders began in Uganda and it is therefore only appropriate that this series should begin with some of the best new writing coming out of Uganda.

For more information about Crossing Borders please see

The British Council is the United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational opportunities and cultural relations. It connect people worldwide with learning opportunities and creative ideas from the UK and builds lasting relationships between the UK and other countries.

Richard Weyers

Director

British Council Uganda

Titles and Author information:

By the African Fire

by

Julius Caesar Sseremba

By The African Fire is a collection of six short stories for children. The bonfire was always a special place in any homestead. When special feasts had to be marked, the family shared a meal together around the fire; celebrations meant dancing and singing around the fire; when death struck, the mourners there gathered to comfort one another; and when it was time to tell a story, or to teach traditions, the younger ones sat down, by the fire, at the feet of the elders. These fiction stories relay the fireside experience that has brought much joy and learning to many a generation of African children. The richness of the experience with its strong appeal to the imagination is a pleasure to partake again and again and the reader is invited herein to share this same experience.

Julius Caesar Sseremba was born and raised in Uganda. He holds a BSc (Chemistry) degree from MakerereUniversity, and currently lives in Kampala. He is a fellow of the Crossing Borders African writing development program. He started writing in 2002. He has written articles and short stories in Relate Magazine, The New Vision, The Weekly Observer and the Crossing Borders Anthology of the New Ugandan Writing.

A Leopard in My Bed and other stories

By

Patrick Mangeni Wa’Ndeda

These stories explore childhood, adolescence and adulthood experiences. A leopard visits the village, and a boy wakes to ‘hairy company’ and prays for a better death. The arrival of a newcomer, in Muzungu’s Pupu, exposes filial rivalry that upsets family balance. Greeting relatives, about two children sent to deliver fish to a relative, explores childhood fear in the children’s encounter with Bokilo, the mortuary attendant, lepers, and ghosts. In Charming Namukati, Siambi and Tabuley improvise shortcuts to maturity, so as to charm new girls in the village. Themes of family and manhood as a performance are furthered in The Birthmark. Namacheke asks her son, “What has love got to do with marriage?” And Maya in Maya the Man abandons his wife Anyango, intending to prove that he’s still a man but the outcome is just as dramatic as it turns out for Ouma, when he gambles with a girlfriend of his deceased friend On the Last day.

Patrick Mangeni wa’Ndeda, currently completing a PhD (Applied Theatre) at Griffith University, Australia – where he also teaches in Scriptwriting – is a Senior Lecturer in Theatre (Makerere UniversityUganda) and a Community Theatre facilitator. He was a poet in residence at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany in 1996, Chairperson of the Uganda Writer’s Association and a Guest Poet for the 2003 Queensland (Australia) Poetry Festival. His plays, Operation Mulungusi and The Prince won the National book Trust of Uganda Literature Prize 2001. He has written a children’s novel, The Great Temptation. A poet and performance critic, he is completing a collection: The Second Coming and Other Poems.

The Price of Memory

By

Mildred Kiconco Barya

The Price of Memory is a collection of 63 poems. The poems in vivid imagery uncover what happens when the pleasurable thrill of being alive is lost in the pain that settles among the familiar and refuses to say goodbye, as in the poems ‘Baggage’ and ‘Maybe’.

The subject of memory, remembrance and forgetfulness resound throughout the collection, from the private nostalgic experiences in ‘Wastelands’, ‘The Island’ to the collective ‘Africa re-disappointed’, ‘Borderless Africa’ and ‘Child of the Universe’.

In this poetry, we witness what comes out of keeping dreams in trouser pockets ridden with holes. When we send the eye to look into the future, with shock we discover that the future came … what can take away the pain and cold anger is the indomitable will that purposes to shed off memory like a cloak.

Mildred Kiconco Barya is a writer and poet. She has written short-stories and essays for various publications, features and travel articles for newspapers. Her first collection of poetry titled: Men Love Chocolates But They Don’t Say won the National Award for poetry publication 2002. The Price of Memory is her second poetry collection. Her current writing highlight HIV/AIDS issues, religious cults and the pursuit of identity and belonging.

Mildred lives in Uganda, her homeland and works on her novel: Soul of Rivers. Among her recent publications include Call me a Panda, an HIV/AIDS children’s story, Effigy Child, a short story with Commonwealth Broadcasting Association, We Seek a Face, a short story with Authorme.com and Raindrops a short story in Words from a Granary, FEMRITE publication.

The Deadly Ambition

by

Glaydah Namukasa

Evan Busagwa is determined to get rich. He isn’t ready to meet any stumbling blocks, but is ready to be a stumbling block to whoever steps in his way. He murders John Bosco Mukasa and Vincent Kalule, both coffee traders. With calculated deceit and manipulation he takes over John Bosco’s property and later marries Kalule’s widow.

Anastanzia Kirabo, the only surviving child of John Bosco, leads her life in a world of fear. She has to run away form the murderer, Busagwa, whom she only knows as ‘the stranger’. For some years, her life turns out to be of incognito living.

Ivan Kabuye, Kalule’s bereaved son, has to live with Busagwa as a stepfather. His uncertainties about his stepfather grow with each passing day. And when his mother, Maria, dies, suspicion kindles within him. He’s sparked off to find out who his stepfather is.

Glaydah Namukasa was born in Uganda. Bereaved of her father as a child, she grew up in Entebbe with her mother, three sisters and two brothers. She studied in NkumbaPrimary School, then EntebbeSecondary School. She graduated as a Midwife in June 2000. Currently, she is working with Wakiso District. She joined the Uganda Female Writers’ Association, FEMRITE in 2002. Later she joined the British Council Crossing Borders creative writing scheme. The Deadly Ambition is her first adult novel. Her first young adult manuscript Voice of a Dream won the Macmillan Writers Prize for Africa competition 2005, and is to be published by Macmillan Publishers in September 2006. Her short stories include Ojera’s Final Hope, published in the USA, The Naked Bones, published by FEMRITE and Still Hope Survives, to be published in the New African Writer’s Anthology, UK.