"...publishers themselves and gate-keepers need to be more creative." An Interview with Ellah Wakatama Allfrey.

Ellah Allfrey is an icon of the publishing industry, managing to support both diaspora and local African writing projects alike and championing change, creativity and emerging writers. Tiah spoke to her about her latest editing project, new ways of thinking about African writing and naturally, what she's reading.

Thank you for sharing Safe House with me. It was slightly eerie, yet wonderful, to read personal stories from writers I know on a professional basis, but do not know in such intimate detail. As you say in the introduction, 'Too often, writing about Africa has been at a distance, a view to a place as far away….we developed the pieces in this collection, [a] personal voice that allowed the writer to become a part of the story.' These essays, very much, bring the writer into the story.

For readers who are unfamiliar with the collection, please tell us a bit about how the project started and what it is about.  

ELLAH: This project has been in my head (actually, in my heart!) for over six years. I had the great fortune of being able to commission non-fiction books and long-form creative non-fiction in my last two jobs (at Jonathan Cape and at Granta) but found it was often difficult to get the backing to take a chance on writers living in Africa who did not have a proven track record. This kind of writing takes time, and that time has to be paid for – so it’s understandable that publishers are risk averse. When Commonwealth Writers offered to support a Creative Non-Fiction workshop (which was held in Kampala in 2014) and, subsequently, the anthology itself, I finally found I had the means to bring the book together.

The collection purposefully does not have a single theme. I was most interested in what writers themselves wanted to say – the subjects that were preoccupying them as they lived and worked in their own communities. It was interesting to me that even with this ‘open call’ approach, clear themes did indeed become apparent, and I used those to organise the pieces into sections. So, in short, the collection is about Africa now – stories by people writing about their own communities and, in some cases, their own lives.

Safe House came to my attention via your podcast with Chike Frankie Edozien, a must-listen piece. One aspect that impressed me with the collection is how it gives space to tell stories such as Chike's and others that address the lives of LGBTQIA+ individuals in various African countries. Do you think we might have reached a turning point where both publishers and readers are becoming open to widening their ears to broader voices and their stories?

ELLAH: If we haven’t yet reached that turning point we are near it and I am committed to do everything I can to make sure these voices are heard. The treatment of – and desire to silence – those of LGBTI orientation seems such obvious nonsense to me. It’s imperative that we are all viewed as human beings, deserving of respect, safety and dignity … and the freedom to love and give expression to that love, regardless of orientation or gender identification. So the pieces in Safe House on this particular issue were specially commissioned. I wanted to read these stories written without the filter of agenda and from a distinctly African perspective. The quality of the writing and the impact potential of each piece was supremely gratifying.

I like your phrase ‘widening their ears’.

How did the editing process work between you, the rest of the editing team and the numerous writers that contributed to the collection?

ELLAH: All of the editing was done via email. From the very beginning (concept, to open call, to initial responses and line edits through to completion), I shared all communications with my excellent assistant editor Otieno Owino and we also had meetings via Skype. Otieno took the lead on several edits as part of the apprenticeship and did amazing work.

It was a huge privilege to work with such a range of writers; I had worked with a handful of them before and admired several for their work. A few I met through this book for the first time.

It’s a challenge to work with writers who are starting off from such different places in their careers but I was always aware that robust editorial support was going to be crucial in this project. In the end, it was nothing but a delight.

How did your upbringing influence the editor you are today?

ELLAH: Nice question. I’ve spoken about my inheritance as the daughter of an author/editor/publisher elsewhere and think it directly influences everything I do. I also inherited a relentless curiosity from both my parents and grew up in a house where discussion and debate were daily bread. So I want to know about the world I live in and feel hugely privileged to be able to ask questions and have them answered in book form for readers to share with me.

You wrote a wonderful piece for The Guardian: "Writers Need New Ways of Talking About Africa's Past and Present". Following that, what conversations do the African writing community, with all its variety that a community of over 50 countries brings, need to be having?

ELLAH: I would never presume to tell writers what they ‘should’ be doing. The actual point of my piece was that publishers themselves and gate-keepers need to be more creative – bolder, readier to take risks – in enabling writers to tell the stories they want and to experiment with form. In the same way, I am not about to tell the ‘African writing community’ (whatever that is!) what conversation to have. To my mind, the writers are already having the conversation and it’s up to my tribe, the publishers, those who are able to put together support for the publication of books or to make connections between writers and agents, publishers, to step up and start making things happen. Having said that, I think there are already exciting initiatives about and publications that have been championing this kind of work for years. Now it’s about making sure we work together to keep momentum going and to continue encouraging writers. And, of course, making sure that this kind of writing provides a way for writers to make a decent living.

On Ellah's Bedside Table

I have just finished The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson and am still spinning from the experience. Her approach to memoir/non-fiction is stunning and I am deeply, deeply in love with her brain. I’m planning to re-read it this week.

I’ve just started a post as visiting professor at Goshen College so I am re-reading a couple of beloved books in preparation for discussions with my students. One Day I Will Write About This Place; The Orchard of Lost Souls; Lost and Found in Johannesburg; The Jive-Talker…

Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, OBE, editor, critic, and broadcaster, is former deputy editor of Granta magazine, series editor for the Kwani? Manuscript Prize, and the deputy chair of the Caine Prize for African Writing. She served as a judge on the 2015 Man Booker Prize panel. She lives in London, England.

Interview by Tiah Beautement a.k.a @ms_tiahmarie

"Correctness...is not the be-all & end-all of editing." The Art Of Editing, 3

Helen Moffett, Efemia Chela and Bongani Kona and SSDA's intern, Catherine Shepherd are all involved in the SSDA/Worldreader Editing Mentorship. In the third edition of the series, they talk about what they've learnt editing a collection with stories from 9 different countries and that draws inspiration from even more.

Editing in the African context is fairly unique. The writers of our fair continent travel in their writing, creating complex stories that rarely draw on just one place, one generation, one lived experience or language. As an editor you have a responsibility to keep an eye out for the changes in tone and slang. There are 54 countries that make up Africa - so there's nothing homogenous about the writing you will be encountering. 

During the fellowship we noted it was important to place the story's own voice as well as its characters in the proper context. Hopefully the writer will have done the proper research, but if something sounds strange. Look it up and then draw it to the author's attention. 

Related to this is the issue of over-editing:

"It's a tricky balance to strike but the best editors are tightrope walkers." - Bongani Kona

"Books that have been stripped of their local flavour and language, make for a boring read. It can be difficult to parse particular words into "standard" English. So in quite a few cases they should just be left as they are - okada, trotro, lobola, counterback.

I think you should trust the reader to be invested enough in the story to gather meaning from the surrounding words. Or Google it." - Efemia Chela

Helen Moffett adds:

My pet peeve is editors who “correct” local idiom & vibrant dialogue. The Queen’s English is not required for most characters.

The editor in Africa must be sensitive to variety of Englishes reflecting/representing multilingual societies.

It's a similar thing with correctness; it is not the be-all & end-all of editing. Consistency is sometimes more important. What does have to be correct is the Internal logic of story. Even short stories can have plot holes or contradictions.

Cathy's experience of the mentorship is slightly different and she explains what that entails:

I'm dealing with the e-book for the young writers that entered Migrations. It's well on its way as I am feverishly editing some powerful stories written by young African writers still in high school, under the guidance of the talented writer and literary critic Karina Szczurek.

Editing is definitely a big responsibility but like the actual art of writing,  the more you do it the easier it flows. There are some hard and fast rules in the editing game but I got some good advice about things that don't follow those rules.

"Follow your gut," Karina Szczurek told me before I began to chop, suggest and rearrange someone else's baby.

---

Worldreader is sponsoring the first SSDA Editing Mentorship Programme. Next week in the final edition, we talk about tying up loose ends. 

"...your work must remain invisible to the naked eye." The Art of Editing, 2

Helen Moffett, Efemia Chela and Bongani Kona and SSDA's intern, Catherine Shepherd are all involved in the SSDA/Worldreader Editing Mentorship. More information about it can be found here. In the second edition of the series, they discuss the role of the editor, writer/editor boundaries and how to navigate them.

To lead us in here is a beautiful analogy of the role of the editor:

"In a small office on the fourth floor of the building I work in, is a Senegalese tailor with gold-rimmed spectacles, Mr. M. Over the years, I’ve dropped off various garments with him, all needing a mend of some kind and within a day or two, Mr. M. has returned them looking as good as new. 

It’s no surprise then that I draw parallels between Mr. M and my own work as an editor-in-training.

Editing, I think, works the same way: lonely hours in a dark room mending stories.

And much as each garment has to be treated differently, each story requires different levels of intervention. Sometimes it may just be changing the order of a sentence or it could require deleting entire paragraphs. But everything is done in the service of the story and like Mr. M., your work must remain invisible to the naked eye." - Bongani Kona

The other fellows echo Bongani's sentiments: 

"Don't fall into the trap of rewriting someone's story. It's unfair to you as an editor - you don't get credited. And it's unfair to the writer - it doesn't give them a chance to work on THEIR story and get their words out. It's their vision. They have to take responsibility for their story.

Don't be the midwife that snatches the baby from the mother and flees!

Give suggestions:

• Encourage more research if their characters are weak
• Correct obvious grammar issues but enquire about issues of tone
• Raise concerns about plot development and character arcs

If what the writer needs is an intensive rewrite and reworking, they should hire you as a ghost writer NOT an editor." - Efemia Chela

Helen's Moffet's take:

"Never impose your own voice.

Your job as an editor is to become a writing chameleon

To blend into the author’s text. But you’re also the reader’s representative. You are their eyes and ears. Your job is to ask: how will they respond to this story?

In terms of the editor's role, I find fact-checking is a much neglected element of editing. Part of being an editor is raising red flags about suspect facts. In a story I edited once, the writer had a ship sail from Suez to Khartoum – via sea. Er, no. Not geographically possible."

Efemia adds: 

[Fact-checking] is especially important if you're writing about a place people know. Nothing irritates me more than having been somewhere, reading a book set in the same place and the author getting it wrong. It's my pet peeve and so many authors are guilty of it. GRR!!! It's jarring for the reader. Yes its fiction so they suspend their disbelief but a patently obvious error ruins the narrative for them.

Speaking of pet peeves, Catherine raises one of hers:

"The repetition of the same word used again too soon. Our brain likes to repeat a concept without us even realising what we have done. I stumble over repetition easily now when editing but it must be one of the most natural writing errors we make in the beginning as writers. So as an editor that's something you need to point out."

Worldreader is sponsoring the first SSDA Editing Mentorship Programme. In next week's Art of Editing, the Migrations editing team discuss the challenges and privileges of editing in a multi-lingual context like Africa and more.

#WomenCrushWednesday #WriteTips

A publisher, a poet and a writer dispense advice today. And it turned out to be a #WCW to boot. We hope you are inspired by their diverse viewpoints to get writing, to refine your style and share your work with the world.  

Nyana Kakoma

A good editor is on your side. I have met a lot of writers that get defensive when the word “editor” is mentioned. They tend to think that editors are there to just change and destroy everything they have written. But a good editor acts as a writer’s best reader and knowing that they are on your side as a writer eases the process of bringing out the best out of your writing.

Juliane Okot Bitek

Ha, ha, ha. That I should have any writing/editing tips for anyone to follow. I can share what works for me that I have emulated from others.

1. To write well, you must read and read widely.

2. Good work takes time. It might emerge in spurts or even pour out all at once, but even that is the product of time. Be patient.

3. Edit your work. Or have someone else look at it with keen eyes.

4. Not your parents, though. That could go many ways. They might be: oh my god, you’re the best writer in the whole world! (That’s no good). They might go: ya, it’s okay. But when are you going to get a real job? Maybe you can write when you’re retired. (That’s no good, either). Or maybe they’ll go: why don’t you write like xyz who has made movies out of their novels and are now famous? What are you planning to do with this poem/short story/chapter… (That’s no good). Or maybe they’ll go: I don’t know what to make of it. Or, I’m busy. Or, show it to your sister. They understand you better. (Also no good). Your parents might not be the best critics even though they might claim to love you the best and want the best for you. Same with lovers.

5. There are no words so sublime that they cannot be edited out or re-written. Words are tools, not God. Even though we have been taught that in the beginning was the word and the word was God… Ya. (I write this with the humility that any good work requires an excellent editor. Mine was Peter Midgley whose light hand made 100 Days shimmer).

6. I believe that words, like food, must not be wasted. The mark of a good writer is that whose work flows seamlessly as if it was easy. The good writer is absent; all that exists is the world created by the reader and the words on the page. I really, really aspire to that and I recognize that it is a goal not an achievement.

7. Not everything we write must be published. Sometimes words emerge like a prelude to something else. Be patient with your own writing and with yourself.

8. Read some more. Read for content and read for strategy. Note the interesting ways that different artists craft their work. See how you can work your own way out.

9. If you have an inclination towards other works of art, and can, check out other forms of expression. I’m often really inspired and drawn to abstract paintings. What I cannot possibly do on a canvas I try to do in my poetry.

That’s it. That’s everything.

Rahla Xenopoulos

JUST WRITE, WRITE, WRITE, WRITE. Write with love, with friendship, with self-encouragement and abandon. My writing teacher used to say, “if you write with your hand it goes through your heart, if you write with a computer it goes through your head.” So, I’m a believer in hand writing.

Fuck spelling, grammar and most of what you learnt at school, write what’s in your heart. You can correct and edit later.

Also, you can’t write if you don’t read, and if you read trash you will write trash. Read good literature.

"I think it’s a way for me to assert a kind of order in a very disordered world." An Interview with Efemia Chela.

Efemia Chela is an Editor for Parrésia and Content Creator for Short Story Day Africa. After being grilled by Efemia last week, Helen Moffett had an opportunity for revenge. She picked her brain about her fingers-in-many-pies attitude to literature, her personal migrations and the experience of editing.

Tell us about your interesting and illustrious history of short story writing. OK, I’m going to start, with the fact that leaps to the top of any Google search of your name: that your story “Chicken” made you the youngest ever person to get on the shortlist for the Caine Prize. But you haven’t slowed down, and you’re still a baby (bear with me: I’m thirty – THEERRRTY – years older than you). Tell us all, and supply links to your published stories, please.

EFEMIA: You’re too kind. I’m only a wee writer, about 3 years into writing consistently and for publication. I’ve always wanted to write but reading too much good literature as a lonely teen convinced me for many years that I had nothing to contribute. Which is silly, if you are a young writer out there thinking that; don’t think that. There’s always more that needs to be written. Everything can be retold and approached in a different way by a new fascinating person...or artificial intelligence nowadays apparently.

I’m mostly anthologised but a couple of my stories are available, free to read online. "Chicken" was originally published in Feast, Famine and Potluck, the SSDA anthology, then in The Gonjon Pin. A flash fiction I wrote "Petty Blood Sport" was taken up by PEN America. Most recently "The Lake Retba Murder" has been republished in the October issue of New Internationalist. It was originally part of Water, last year's SSDA collection.

My newest story, "Mont De Venus" will be in Issue 88 of Wasafiri, coming out this December.

"He said it was to be goodbye. I didn’t know what that meant. For our petty blood sport to be over. No more bruises to pepper my pallid body" -  "Petty Blood Sport" 

In an interview with Nick Mulgrew, you confess that “there is an entire novel in the bottom of my handbag written on the back of receipts”. Is this true? Details, please.

EFEMIA: It is true. I am the most disorganised, scatterbrained writer in the the world. I have a notebook but it always seems to be half empty or not to hand. The receipts tend to get smoothed out and collated every three months or so and then get put into a Word doc. Then I work from a line that strikes me from the ravings and half-baked thoughts. From that a story emerges quite slowly. I really want to write a novel but at the speed I write I don’t think that will be before I turn 30.

Somewhere I read that you once wanted to be a literary translator. True or false? What languages do you speak? And seriously: editing entries for the Short Story Day Africa anthology (or any collection of works from the continent) teaches us (me, anyway) how vital it is to be multilingual or at the very least to have an ear for the the patterns, shapes and idioms of the languages that lie beneath the Englishes used. Your thoughts?

EFEMIA: Your intell is good! I speak French and English fluently and I’d like to be a literary translator of work that pushes the boundaries in terms of content and form. I salivate at the kind of stuff Deep Vellum is doing and finding le mot juste - what most people call nit-picking. Fingers crossed I will be busy with my Master’s next year.

It is handy, having lived in a couple of African countries because I know a bit more about what the local turn of phrase is in a couple of places. I can edit for what’s correct in that context instead of using “blanket editing” and ruining the distinctive flavour of a piece.

I think if you’re not multilingual you’re missing out on some of the best African fiction - much of which isn’t being written in English. A lot of people have slept on Scholastique Mukasonga, JMG Le Clézio (originally Mauritian, we’ll claim him), Mia Couto, Alain Mabanckou and Marlene Van Niekerk for that reason, until they got translated into English. And that process takes a couple of years or worse never happens.

"The guards in our gated community were paid off to pre-empt noise complaints, as were the local police. Our racist neighbours were invited in time for them to book a night away." - “Chicken” 

This is probably a good place to ask you about your rolling stone childhood and education, and how that’s shaped your writing.

EFEMIA: My parents are very ambitious so we moved around a lot as a child and then I grew up to love travel too and so have upped and left a couple of countries myself. UK, Malawi, Zambia, Ghana, South Africa, France, Botswana, Japan are all places I’ve lived. Its shaped my writing because I like to write trans-national stories, and explore ideas of place and identity. People always ask where I’m from and ethnically I’m half-Zambian, half-Ghanaian but that doesn’t even begin to explain who I am. There’s a disconnect between who I am online, who I am on paper and who I am in real life. I think a lot of people feel the same way - I like to explore those kind of contradictions in my fiction.

Your favourite writers. No more than five. Okay, six.

EFEMIA: This is always the hardest question. But today, let’s see. I’ll go with Daniel Clowes, Toni Morrison, Haruki Murakami, Douglas Coupland, Chinua Achebe (we share the same birthday!) and Sylvia Plath.

The authors who have influenced you the most (if different from the above list).

EFEMIA: Martin Amis, he sneers, his whole oeuvre sneers. He creates these awful, morally reprehensible characters and doesn’t shy away from their dirty little crevices. He excavates them, lays them out and it makes for fascinating, revelatory reading. From him I learnt truth and filth.

Georges Perec. He’s perhaps the most well-known of the Oulipo, a group of writers who write under self-imposed constraints. Maybe his most well known work in translation is La Disparition, or A Void  a post-modern mystery novel about a private detective, without a single "e" in it.  He’s didn't write for accessibility. He wrote for beauty, intricacy and to entertain himself, which was selfish but turned into a gift for the readers. He cared tenderly for his work, his craft and detail - I like to think I picked that up from him.

One more, Elena Ferrante, the newest person to influence me. I think she’s freed me from thinking that any topic can be trivial in fiction. Often writers want to write about these colossal ideas. But those ideas are no more important than say the discomfort of what it’s like to pick up a call while on the loo and have to stand around awkwardly waiting until the call is over so you can flush without embarrassing yourself. Her focus is narrow: Neapolitan working class women but she does it exceptionally, with nuance, without shame. I have learnt bravery in subject choice from her.

I know this is predictable, but I always want to know: what are you reading at the moment? What’s stacked up on your bedside table/e-reader?

EFEMIA: Patience by Daniel Clowes. I love a good graphic novel and I’ve been waiting to savour this one for a while. I’ve just finished Kim Gordon’s Girl In a Band, which is out of character for me. I never read non-fiction but I’m getting into memoir nowadays, especially of my heroes and she is one of them.

Ali Smith’s How To Be Both and A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James await me as does this lovely book called Africa Writes Back by James Currey. The latter surveys the African Writers Series and the history of it.

Which reminds me, how do you feel about e-readers?

EFEMIA: This is an official open call for anyone to feel free to buy me a Kindle with an Amazon gift certificate too. (laughs) I think they’re really handy for traveling. I have books stranded all over the world that haunt me because I’ve had to leave them behind. So a Kindle would be great to carry around my perennial favourites and new things I want to pick up.

That said, I don’t think I’ll ever stop buying “real” books. Reading’s a nice timeout from screen time. Plus I find folding the pages and the marking up of hard copy books therapeutic. The different typography, the pretty covers on my shelf, falling asleep with pages on my face. 

So both preferably. Does that make me a medium whore?

"He understood the physics of her. Her body and how she liked to be tossed, folded and bent on the bed. In sex he was gloriously tethered to her lurid kinetics." - "The Lake Retba Murder"

How did you get involved with Short Story Day Africa?

EFEMIA: I won 3rd place, (if that’s winning) of Feast, Famine and Potluck, the 2013 competition and that kind of launched my writing career. And then I got more involved in writing and the Cape Town literary scene and seeing Rachel Zadok around.

One day I plucked up the courage to ask if I could work for her and she said yes. I was always interested in how such a small group of really passionate people could get so much work and such great work done and I wanted to be a part of that.

Along with Bongani Kona, you’re one of the editors for the 2017 SSDA anthology, Migrations. This year, SSDA is running an editing fellowship programme, with me as the mentor. What makes you interested in editing? How do you handle the tension between being an editor and a writer (believe me, I really REALLY want to know if you have answers to this one). Or don’t you feel that tension?

EFEMIA: I think it’s a way for me to assert a kind of order in a very disordered world. You know, Brexit happened and the Great Barrier Reef is nearly dead but we’ve fixed the plot hole in page 31 about the parallel universe and the nuclear squirrel. I think it comes down to me really liking helping people and this is being the only way I know how to.

I struggle very hard with balancing the writer and editor sides of my personality. Sometimes part of me wants to rewrite the whole piece. But that would be pointless. I don’t want to erase the writer, I respect their work and vision. Editing is a lot like being a sounding board. I’m really just there to make the writer find in themselves something that was always there, that they didn’t know was and then use it to improve the story.

Through the mentorship I’m learning to hear the story in the author’s voice, slip into their mind. It’s helping me become a better editor and bodysnatcher. I’m also learning more about rigour - check, check and check again. The buck stops with you.

Efemia Chela was born in Zambia in 1991. She studied at Rhodes University, South Africa and Institut D’Etudes Politiques in Aix-En-Provence, France.

She enjoys eating pizza, reading graphic novels and watching black and white films. Her first published story, ‘Chicken’ was nominated for The 2014 Caine Prize For African Writing. Efemia’s subsequent stories and poems have been published in places like Brittle Paper, Jalada, Short.Sharp.Stories: Adults Only, Prufrock and PEN Passages: Africa. Efemia is currently a fellow of the inaugural Short Story Day Africa / Worldreader Editing Mentorship Programme and continues to write fiction whenever she can find a moment on the train and a working pen.