Sooo Many Stories, Uganda’s newest publishing house, is set to launch Kagayi Peter’s poetry collection in June.
Sooo Many Stories, run by the irrepressible Nyana Kakoma, was introduced to many of us as a blog which unashamedly promoted content from Uganda. The blog was on the cutting edge on all that was literature of all genres in the East African nation. This included essays, short stories, poems and even interviews of interviews of interest of Ugandan writers or those of interest to them.
Nyana Kakoma has decided to up her ante where her passion is concerned; she and her team are launching a publishing house exclusive for Ugandan literature this month. The independent publisher will have the same name we have so far known as her blog’s moniker. It will publish literary fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction and has plans of publishing pulp fiction.
Our Nyana doesn’t do things half way as the first title is already ready for the world. The book is question is The Headline That Morning and Other poems from poet Peter Kagayi.
Kagayi Peter is one of the most well-known names in the Ugandan poetry scene today. He came to prominence as the President of the Lantern Meet of Poets (Lamp), Uganda’s largest community of Poets a role he has since left behind. Lamp is a bi-weekly writers’ meeting established in 2007 at Makerere University. He also publishes literary critiques with newspapers The Notice and the Daily Monitor as well as on his blog. Most recently, he was appointed to be the Anglophone coordinator of the Writivism initiative.
The new book which will be launched at a yet to be confirmed venue and date in June will include a CD with some of the poems which were recorded by the poet. You can listen to a sample of Kagayi Nightmares which was produced by Dustville’s Abaasa and Baru here. Not bad eh?
With this new publishing house, we can expect a shake up in the Ugandan literary scene.
It’s about time.
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