By Madi Njie
The Gambia’s award-winning writer is set to complete his Africa tour in the Nigerian capital Abuja. Modou Lamin Sowe — one of Gambia’s finest young writers and the founder of the Young Writers’ Association of The Gambia (YWAG) — will join West Africa’s finest emerging writers from Cameroon, Ghana and Nigeria at the PenPen African Writer’s Residency. They are Nyang God’s Will N (Cameroonian), Ernestina Edem Azah (Ghanaian), Sakina Traore (Ivorian), Tega Oghenechovwen (Nigerian) and Maryam Boyi (Nigeriaan).
The man nicknamed Modou Lamin Age-Almusaf Sowe is also the current Secretary General of the Writers’ Association of The Gambia (WAG).
The PenPen Africa is an African writers’ residency project that will feature twelve selected writers from across Africa. The programme, being held in both Nigeria and Kenya, is slated from 1 July 2019 to June 30, 2020. The residency which is implemented in partnership with the Writers Guild Kenya is funded by Culture at Work Africa and co-funded by the European Union.
The first edition of the residency which features Mr Sowe will be held from 1 to 22 November 2019 in Abuja. It brings together writers from West and Central Africa. The second edition that covers writers from East and Southern Africa shall be held in Nairobi, Kenya in March 2020.
Mr. Sowe is an emerging West African writer and scholar who has traveled to 14 different countries in Africa. He is an independent researcher and scholar of intellectual property, library, information studies, records and archives management. He was very recently in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia at the African Union Headquarters for the 2019 International Year of Indigenous Languages organized by the African Academy of Languages (ACALAN) in partnership with UNESCO. Mr. Sowe was also in the same place for the Young African Thinkers Convention (YATC 2018) organised by the Youth Division under the auspices of the African Union and Beza International Ministries.
He returned to The Gambia on 8 March 2019. Unfortunately, he lost his biological mother two weeks upon arrival. Sowe’s latest works include publication of a poem on African Writers Magazine. The poem, entitled ”The Forest of Silence”, can be found on this link: https://www.africanwriter.com/forest-silence-poetry-modou-lamin-age-almusaf-sowe/
Sowe was also in Kenya and Morocco for the African Writers Conference and the UN Youth and Children Migration Forum held in Marakesh.
“We want to reach out to wider audience and collaborate with different writers and writers associations across Africa by spreading positivism and the visibility of Gambian literature and publications,” said Sowe who was recently named the Gambian representative to the Writers Space Africa (WSA).
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