Africa in Dialogue Announces New Interns for May to October 2020
AFRICA IN DIALOGUE ANNOUNCES NEW INTERNS for may to october 2020
We are excited to welcome a cohort of nine new interns into the Africa in Dialogue Internship Program.
The Internship Program, led by our Internship Director Nkateko Masinga, is a bi~annual learning and curating opportunity for creative individuals who are passionate, knowledgeable and interested in African Storytellers and the art of Interviewing.
In conceptualizing this internship, we were seeking to build a team that is diverse, not only in the African countries represented by the candidates but also in the people they wanted to have conversations with.
We were looking for individuals who were familiar with our work at Africa in Dialogue, had ideas on how to grow the platform and were passionate about the deliberate process of archiving creative and critical insights.
Our mission is inter-continental conversation, collaboration and community, so we are excited that our interns represent four regions of Africa:
Rrepresenting North Africa we have Saliha Haddad from Algeria.
Representing East Africa we have Edith Knight Magak and Kylie Kiunguyu from Kenya and Davina Philomena Kawuma from Uganda.
Representing West Africa we have Chisom Okwara and Desmond Efe-khaese from Nigeria.
Representing Southern Africa we have Jaliya The Bird from Angola, Gerry Sikazwe from Zambia and Tinotenda Heather Mavunga from Zimbabwe.
Learn more about our new interns below:
CONTRIBUTING INTERVIEWER FOR CREATIVE NON-FICTION:
edith knight magak (kenya)
Edith Knight Magak is a Kenyan writer and editor living in Nairobi. She has been an editor at Writers Space Africa Magazine and currently serves on the board of the African Writers Development Trust. A great enthusiast of flash fiction, she served as a judge at the 2018 African Writers Awards – Flash Fiction category.
On writing, she has been published in anthologies and magazines including Brittle Paper, Kikwetu Journal, Six Hens, Jalada, Okada books, Urban Ivy, among others. In 2019, she was longlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Award.
She believes that Creative Non-fiction is the future of writing!
CONTRIBUTING INTERVIEWER FOR CREATIVE NON-FICTION:
chisom okwara (nigeria)
Chisom Okwara is a graduate of Social Sciences from the African Leadership University, Mauritius. She runs BRIM Ltd, a digital comms and content marketing company in Kigali. She is obsessed with fonts, free t-shirts, and fine sentences. You can find her writings on AfricanWriter, Praxis Magazine, Thrive Global, The Question Marker, Medium, her blog – Odetoateen, and her LinkedIn page.
CONTRIBUTING INTERVIEWER FOR FICTION:
saliha haddad (algeria)
Saliha Haddad is an Algerian part-time teacher of English at the university and a volunteer interviewer for online local magazines. She is one of the top graduates of her department in the Anglophone literature and civilization field. She is passionate about art and literature, and she recently became vegetarian. She is currently working on a series of personal essays under the theme of “family”, and on a short story about an aspiring painter. Her philosophy in life is to always try be the best version of yourself and to always keep on learning.
CONTRIBUTING INTERVIEWER FOR FICTION:
davina philomena kawuma (uganda)
Davina is a reader who happens to like writing. She writes in several forms (including poetry and essays) but is for some reason most drawn to the short story.
Stories are how she makes sense of the world, and of her (imagined or otherwise) moral, intellectual, spiritual, and physical place in it. She’s committed to the creation of a legacy that equalizes the telling of stories. Her range of interests includes social media, the mothering of the tongue, and English which, despite our sincerest efforts to preserve it, keeps breaking (sometimes into more pieces than we can pick up).
CONTRIBUTING INTERVIEWER FOR POETRY:
Jaliya the bird (Angola)
Jaliya The Bird is a writer, poet, performer from Angola. Her work explores Womanhood, Blackness, Pan-Africanism within the concept of [Inter]Sessions: UnSpoken Words. [Inter]Sessions is provoking, celebrating, releasing emotion and thought through storytelling, writing, poetry, and performance art. The artist is passionate about freedom and authenticity, living life from the core of who we are as we respond to the causes that move us. Her spoken word film Idle Worship directed by Ariel Casimiro via Usovoli Cinema won best spoken word film at the Realtime International Film Festival 2020 Edition. @Jaliyathebird on social media.
CONTRIBUTING INTERVIEWER FOR POETRY:
gerry sikazwe (zambia)
Gerry Sikazwe is a Zambian poet, literary blogger, and a creative writing coach. He is the author of Words That Matter (Mwanaka Publishers, 2018), a poetry collection.
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR:
kylie kiunguyu (kenya)
Kylie Kiunguyu is a Communications Specialist with a penchant for poetry and creative writing. She has experience in both the corporate and non-profit sectors. As a freelance writer, she champions Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR), Gender Equity, Minority Representation, African Knowledge, Climate Action and Conservation.
As a budding Pan-Africanist she has made a point of working with Afrocentric platforms that highlight the diverse identities and narratives of the continent.
She is also a published contributor of the anthologies “Akello” and “A side of raunch” as well as a fierce hoarder of her more personal pieces that can be found on beadsandmirrors.blogspot.com
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR:
tinotenda heather mavunga (zimbabwe)
Tinotenda Heather Mavunga is a Zimbabwean born writer, TEDx 2018 speaker, tech consultant, and digital strategist. She double majored in Psychology and Management, and minored in International Relations and Communications at Monash University. She graduated as a digital marketing alumna of the digital marketing program Digify Pro. She also graduated from the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology, MEST Africa as Zimbabwe’s first entrepreneur in training. A versatile writer with a varied portfolio, she has written over sixty articles on entrepreneurship, digital economy, startups, music and investment across Africa. She is the former Editor and writer at Africa Business 2020, where she profiled notable tech entrepreneurs across West Africa. Her written work has been profiled by the Meltwater.org blog, iAfrikan Online, and Noteworthy, on Medium.
SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER:
desmond efe-khaese (nigeria)
Desmond Efe-khaese is a final year law student with interests in finance, technology, and intellectual property. As a creative writer, he has partnered with Winkleaf, Vasiti Magazine, Tell!, Poets in Nigeria, Kreative Diadem, Wax Poetry and Art to list a few. He was the winner at the 2020 Biz-Idol Challenge 3.0 and 2019 Brigitte Poirson Poetry Contest (BPPC) April edition;1st runner-up in the 2017 African Poetry Magazine contest and was longlisted for the 2019 African Writer of the year Award for a Flash Fiction. Desmond is passionate about content creation, brand management, storytelling/B2B marketing, leadership, and community development.
INTERNSHIP PROGRAM DIRECTOR:
nkateko masinga (south africa)
Nkateko Masinga is an award-winning South African poet and 2019 Fellow of the Ebedi International Writers Residency. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2018 and her work has received support from Pro Helvetia Johannesburg and the Swiss Arts Council. In 2019, she won the Brittle Paper Anniversary Award. She is the founder and managing director of NSUKU Publishing Consultancy, and the author of a digital chapbook titled THE HEART IS A CAGED ANIMAL, published by Praxis Magazine. Her latest work has been selected by the African Poetry Book Fund, in collaboration with Akashic Books, for the 2020 New Generation African Poets chapbook box set.
Nkateko joined Africa in Dialogue in 2019 as the Poetry Interviewer and as part of her new role as the director of the Internship Program, she will manage, edit, publish and coordinate all initiatives curated by the cohort (s) of the Internship Program.
