FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
8th March 2018 - Short Story Day Africa is thrilled to welcome Lizzy Attree to our board of directors. Lizzy brings her extensive expertise in the field of African writing to the project. She will assist with the running of the organisation and will represent SSDA's interests in the United Kingdom.
Lizzy Attree has a PhD from SOAS, University of London, on “The Literary Responses to HIV and AIDS from South Africa and Zimbabwe from 1990-2005”. Her collection of interviews with the first African writers to write about HIV and AIDS from Zimbabwe and South Africa was published in 2010 by Cambridge Scholars Publishing, and is entitled Blood on the Page. In 2010 she was Visiting Lecturer in the English Department at Rhodes University in South Africa. She taught African literature at Kings College London in 2015 as a temporary Lecturer and hopes to teach again in the future. She was the Director of the Caine Prize from 2014-2018 and is the co-founder of the Mabati Cornell Kiswahili Prize. She sits on the Writivism Board of Trustees and has acted as a judge for Re-Imaged Folktales online. She is the Producer of 'Thinking Outside the Penalty Box' (an African Footballers project funded be Arts Council England) and a freelance writer, reviewer and critic.
Short Story Day Africa aims to develop African writers and editors and provide a platform for their work. The SSDA Editing Mentorship is currently one of the only editing mentorships available to emerging African editors. The Short Story Day Africa Prize is considered the most prestigious prize for African writing on the continent. With Lizzy's help, we hope to make the SSDA Prize a contender on the global stage.