Ellah Wakatama

OBE, Hon. FRSL
Ellah Wakatama (photo by Julian Knox)
Born
Ellah Wakatama

(1966-09-16) 16 September 1966
Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe)
NationalityZimbabwean and British
Other namesEllah Allfrey
Shava, Musiyamwa (Address: vaChihera)
EducationArundel School; Goshen College; Rutgers University
Occupation(s)Literary editor and publisher
Known forPublishing

Ellah Wakatama, OBE, Hon. FRSL (born 16 September 1966),[1] is the Editor-at-Large at Canongate Books,[2] a senior Research Fellow at Manchester University, and Chair of the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing.[3] She was the founding Publishing Director of the Indigo Press.[4] A London-based editor and critic, she was on the judging panel of the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award and the 2015 Man Booker Prize. In 2016, she was a Visiting Professor & Global Intercultural Scholar at Goshen College, Indiana, and was the Guest Master for the 2016 Gabriel Garcia Marquez Foundation international journalism fellowship in Cartagena, Colombia. The former deputy editor of Granta magazine,[5][6] she was the senior editor at Jonathan Cape, Random House and an assistant editor at Penguin. She is series editor of the Kwani? Manuscript Project and the editor of the anthologies Africa39[7] (Bloomsbury, 2014) and Safe House: Explorations in Creative Nonfiction (Dundurn/Cassava Republic).

Her journalism has appeared in the Telegraph, Guardian and Observer newspapers and in the Spectator and The Griffith Review magazines. She is also a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa.[3] She has also been a regular contributor to the books pages of NPR. Her broadcasting includes reviews for NPR’s All Things Considered and BBC Radio 4's Saturday Review. She sat on the selection panel for the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Fellowship for seven years and served as a literature selector for the Rolex 2014-15 Mentor & Protégée Initiative, as well as serving as chair of the Miles Morland Foundation Scholarship Selection panel for three years. She sits on the advisory board for Art for Amnesty and the Editorial Advisory Panel of The Johannesburg Review of Books and the Lagos Review of Books. In 2011, she was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to the publishing industry and in 2019 was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.[8]

Biography

Born in Salisbury, Rhodesia, on 16 September 1966 to Zimbabwean novelist, journalist and publisher Pius Wakatama[9] and entrepreneur and Christian women's rights activist Winnie Wakatama (née Ndoro), Ellah Wakatama spent her formative years between Salisbury and the midwestern USA while her father studied at the University of Iowa. She returned to Rhodesia at the age of 10, attending Arundel School. Her return to America was prompted by her college education, which began at Goshen College, where she received a BA in Journalism, ending at Rutgers University, where she earned an MA from the School of Communication, Information and Library Studies.

She now resides in London, UK, working as Editor-at-Large at Canongate Books, Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, and Chair of the Caine Prize for African Writing.

She is the sister of writer and natural-birth campaigner Mavhu Farai Wakatama Hargrove and of the late Nhamu Wakatama and Richard Wakatama.[10][11]

Awards

A Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts,[12] Allfrey was awarded an OBE in the 2011 New Year Honours for services to the publishing industry.[13][10]

In 2019, she was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.[14][15]

She was named Brittle Paper's "African Literary Person of the Year 2019". an award recognizing individuals who work behind the scenes to hold up the African literary establishment.[16]

Selected articles and essays

  • Review of Call It Dog by Marli Roode (The Guardian, 28 August 2013)[17]
  • "The great Chinua Achebe was the man who gave Africa a voice" (The Observer, 24 March 2013)[18]
  • "All Hail the African Renaissance" (The Telegraph, 9 September 2011)[19]
  • "The cultural battle gave us books and music of genius" (The Observer, 13 April 2013)[20]
  • "Writers need new ways of talking about Africa's past and present" (The Guardian, 4 June 2016)[11]
  • "Longchase" (New Daughters of Africa, 2019)[21]

Podcasts/video

Opinion

Interviews

Collaborations

  • African Writers Trust Literary Feast, Uganda, May 2012.[29]
  • Literary week Nairobi, judge.[30]
  • Judge for Kwani? Manuscript Project[31] – literary prize for unpublished fiction by African writers.
  • "The Trans-Atlantic, the Diaspora, and Africa" participant.[32] – conference hosted by Oxford University Research Centre for the Humanities, to discuss the newest theoretical scholarship emerging from the interdisciplinary fields of USA-derived Diaspora Studies and British-derived Trans-Atlantic Studies, and how these fields have diverged and converged in relation to the idea of Africa.
  • Patron of Etisalat Prize for Literature[33] – pan-African prize celebrating first-time African writers of published books of fiction.
  • Judge for 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize[34] – award for the best piece of unpublished short fiction (2000–5000 words) in English.
  • Wasafiri magazine (contributor), Volume 22, Issue 3, 2007.[35]
  • Interviewer – Binyavanga Wainaina's Book Launch[36]
  • Peter Godwin, The Fear: The Last Days of Robert Mugabe[37] (acknowledgements).
  • Judge for 2010 Caine Prize for African Writing.[38]
  • Introduction to Kojo Laing, Woman of the Aeroplanes.[39]
  • Judge 2011 for David Cohen Prize for Literature.
  • Editor of Africa39: New Writing from Africa South of the Sahara (2014), with a Preface by Wole Soyinka
  • Judge 2015 for Man Booker Prize
  • Editor of Safe House: Explorations in Creative Nonfiction (Cassava Republic Press, 2016)
  • Interview with Margaret Busby, Wasafiri, November 2017.[40]

References

  1. ↑ Editorial Team (14 August 2019), "2019: Top 10 Literary Curators and Editors from Africa Right Now" Archived 11 December 2019 at the Wayback Machine, Witsprouts.
  2. ↑ Wood, Heloise (13 June 2019). "Ellah Wakatama Allfrey joins Canongate as editor-at-large | The Bookseller". www.thebookseller.com. Retrieved 29 July 2019.
  3. 1 2 "Our New Chairperson". The Caine Prize for African Writing. 2 April 2019. Retrieved 29 July 2019.
  4. ↑ Edoro, Ainehi (4 June 2018). "There's a New Publisher in Town! | Indigo Press Promises Bold Ideas and Beautifully-crafted Stories". Brittle Paper. Retrieved 29 July 2019.
  5. ↑ Farrington, Joshua (3 May 2013). "Allfrey to leave Granta | The Bookseller". www.thebookseller.com. Retrieved 29 July 2019.
  6. ↑ Page, Benedicte (20 July 2009). "Allfrey joins Granta Magazine | The Bookseller". www.thebookseller.com. Retrieved 29 July 2019.
  7. ↑ Bloomsbury.com. "Africa39". Bloomsbury Publishing. Retrieved 29 July 2019.
  8. ↑ "Ellah Wakatama Allfrey". The Royal Society of Literature | RSL Fellows.
  9. ↑ "Book Launch - Speech by Pius Wakatama - Weaver Press". weaverpresszimbabwe.com. Retrieved 29 July 2019.
  10. 1 2 Aguirre, Richard R., "A royal honor for Ellah Wakatama Allfrey", Goshen College website, 4 April 2011.
  11. 1 2 Wakatama Allfrey, Ellah (4 June 2016), "Ellah Wakatama Allfrey: writers need new ways of talking about Africa's past and present", The Guardian.
  12. ↑ "Ellah Allfrey", RSA.
  13. ↑ "Zimbabwean writer to receive OBE from Queen", New Zimbabwe, 31 December 2010; via The Zimbabwe Situation. Retrieved 6 November 2018.
  14. ↑ "Myriad authors awarded at the Royal Society of Literature summer party", Myriad Editions, 2019.
  15. ↑ "RSL Elects 45 new Fellows and Honorary Fellows" Archived 28 February 2021 at the Wayback Machine, The Royal Society of Literature, 25 June 2019.
  16. ↑ "Ellah Wakatama Allfrey is Brittle Paper’s African Literary Person of the Year 2019", Brittle Paper, 24 December 2019.
  17. ↑ Watakama Allfrey, Ellah (28 August 2013). "Call It Dog by Marli Roode – review". The Guardian. Retrieved 28 August 2013.
  18. ↑ Wakatama Allfrey, Ellah (24 March 2013)"The great Chinua Achebe was the man who gave Africa a voice" (Comment is free), The Observer.
  19. ↑ Watakama, Ellah (9 September 2011). "All Hail the African Renaissance: The Storymoja Hay Festival with the British Council in Nairobi". The Telegraph.
  20. ↑ Quoted in "Margaret Thatcher and her influence on women", The Observer, 13 April 2013.
  21. ↑ Busby, Margaret, ed. (2019). "Contents". New Daughters of Africa (PDF). Myriad Editions. p. x.
  22. ↑ Presented by Claire Armitstead and produced by Tim Maby, Guardian Books podcast: Political fiction, 5 April 2013.
  23. ↑ "SWRadioAfrica". Archived from the original on 20 October 2013. Retrieved 14 October 2013.
  24. ↑ "Ellah Allfrey, Deputy Editor of Granta, talks about Granta Best of Young British Novelists", Audible.co.uk, 4 April 2013. YouTube.
  25. ↑ "The 10 best contemporary African books. As chosen by Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, deputy editor of Granta Magazine. From a reinterpreted Heart of Darkness to a barstool in Congo", The Observer, 26 August 2012.
  26. ↑ Quoted in "No Violet: From the African Booker to the Booker longlist", GOtv, 25 July 2013.
  27. ↑ Interview by Lance Guma on SW Radio Africa, Zimbabwe Archived 1 June 2011 at the UK Government Web Archive, broadcast 3 January 2011.
  28. ↑ britishcouncilarts on Flickr.
  29. ↑ TJH, "Updates from African Writers Trust", 6 April 2012.
  30. ↑ "Granta comes to Nairobi" Archived 16 October 2013 at the Wayback Machine, British Council, 19 June 2013.
  31. ↑ "Ellah Wakatama Allfrey is Series Editor for Kwani? Manuscript Project" Archived 2 August 2017 at the Wayback Machine, 27 November 2013
  32. ↑ The 2013 Callaloo Conference, 27–30 November 2013. Archived 15 June 2013 at the Wayback Machine
  33. ↑ Kan, Toni, "Etisalat launches new fiction prize" Archived 14 October 2013 at the Wayback Machine, The Nigerian Telegraph, 5 June 2013.
  34. ↑ "2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize judges: Chair: Ellah Allfrey, Commonwealth Writers.
  35. ↑ Wakatama, Ellah; Letitia Adu-Ampoma, Biyi Bandele, Sarah Brouillette, Margaret Busby, Becky Ayebia, David Dabydeen, Lizzy Dijeh, Stacy Engman (October 2007). "Among the contributors". Wasafiri. 22 (3): 91–94. doi:10.1080/02690050701566123. S2CID 219613649.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  36. ↑ Wagwau, Adam, "Binyavanga Wainaina's Book Launch" (review) Archived 16 October 2013 at the Wayback Machine, Ghafla!, 5 June 2012.
  37. ↑ Godwin, Peter (2011). The Fear: The Last Days of Robert Mugabe. London: Picador. p. 368. ISBN 978-0330507776.
  38. ↑ "Caine Prize Judges" Archive.
  39. ↑ Laing, Kojo (2011). Woman of the Aeroplanes. Oxford: Heinemann. p. 286. ISBN 9780435045722. OL 25213240M.
  40. ↑ Allfrey, Ellah Wakatama, "An Interview with Margaret Busby", Wasafiri, Volume 32, 2017, Issue 4, pp. 2–6.
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