Doek Lit Fest Begins

In my wildest literary dreams, I imagine an anxiety of writers turning up in droves.Unleashed for a moment from their Imposter Syndrome, naysaying parents and the tyranny of a 9 to 5, they flock to Goethe-Institut Namibia (Windhoek), where award-winning Zimbabwean author Tsitsi Dangarembga is dropping literary bars and South Africa's eminent Zukiswa Wanner is dragging us about work-life balance.If you're reading this at 10h00 on Saturday morning, I'll be in a workshop by Nigerian author Femi Kayode. The topic is 'The Perfect Crime: Finding the Characters, Topics, and Themes of a Crime Story'.Last year Kayode debuted a book called 'Lightseekers'. It's about a Nigerian psychologist enlisted to investigate why three university students were publicly tortured and murdered in Port Harcourt, and Kayode will be teaching us how to spin a compelling crime yarn.In another room at the same time, Doek Literary Magazine founder and editor-in-chief Rémy Ngamije will be facilitating a workshop on writing and editing short stories. Ngamije, a local author, has had a slew of short stories published and shortlisted around the world and recently won the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize (Africa) for his story 'Granddaughter of the Octopus'.Ngamije, debut author of the novel 'The Eternal Audience of One', is a national treasure.Though writing is a notoriously solitary and often isolating pursuit, Ngamije has decided to work against all that silos and separates us to build a writing community.From the Windhoek Writers Club to Doek! Literary Magazine to the Bank Windhoek Doek Literary Awards and now the Doek Literary Festival in collaboration with the University of East Anglia's creative writing programme, Ngamije has tirelessly provided platforms and created space for Namibian writers to thrive.Many of those Namibian writers are attending the festival.If you've read Doek! you may recognise their names or recall their stories.Windhoek, as I have said so many times before, is a literary city and Namibians are natural storytellers.We overshare in speeding cabs, loudly share our woes in bank queues and we live amid a population so small and so connected that everyone knows everyone else's business, which is often utterly insane.As a nonfiction, personal columnist who often writes about the city, one of the questions I get most often is a variation of “Are you making it all up?”And the answer, dear reader, now, always and for the record is no.To me, life has always been far stranger than fiction. People are unpredictable and complex and a lifetime of free “Wow!”, and so, I write about things that happen.Like anywhere, the 061 and the vast country beyond it are full of stories worth committing to the page.All the more so because so many of them are untold.This year, the biennial Doek Literary Festival's focus is fiction in the novel and short form and I'm going to learn.I'm going to work out whether, as an African writer, I should pursue my MFA via insights by Kayode and Canada's Jean McNeil, who will also be talking about making your literary debut as an older writer. So, I'm going to soak up all the wisdom I can at a historic event meant to unearth and inspire local writers, even though fiction isn't my bread and butter.If I've piqued your interest, you'll be glad to know that the Doek Literary Festival is still on today and tomorrow and the events are all free. You, an aspiring or working writer, book lover or simple liker of things, are welcome to attend all of the events, minus the workshops which are now fully booked.There's a full programme online at festival2022.doek.africaThis is Namibian literary history in the making.A festival. For us.For the writers, the dreamers, the blank page assassins and the Word document heroes.I have no doubt that as you read this and I sit here, I will be in the presence of some of Namibia's most talented current and someday writers.What an honour and a privilege to be a part of that story.What a thing to sit in history and imagine Namibia's brilliant literary future.– martha@namibian.com.na; Martha Mukaiwa on Twitter and Instagram; marthamukaiwa.com

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