
Litt-World 2009 is over. Last week I:
- pondered the implications for my WIP (work in progress) of novelist Davis Bunn’s workshops on writing the breakout novel.
- took avid notes on the process of editing from a gifted Filippina editor, Yna Reyes.
- lined up three possible workshops where I can teach skills to Africans who want to write for the children in their communities, including one in Kisumu, Kenya, the heart of last year’s post-election violence.
- discovered interest in my HIV story “God Loves Me When I Hurt” from publishers in India as well as Burundi, Ghana and Kenya.
- found promising writers from Nigeria and Indonesia who are eager for on-line mentoring.
- enjoyed catching up with former student Nerea Thigo of Kenya (pictured above).
- laughed at the ingenuity of Czech publisher, Alexandr Flek, who set up a web-based club of Beta testers and donors to raise funds and field test his new translation of the Bible—essentially the first in 400 years.
- marveled at the faithfulness of the publisher who prints 2-500 copies of significant titles for the small population who reads Croatian.
- enjoyed the gasps of Africans seeing the Great Rift Valley for the first time.
- ate way too much, stayed up way too late.
- Wished I had a video camera to capture Robin Jones Gunn and Alice Lawhead really getting into it with the African singers and dancers who helped us celebrate the last night.
It was a stimulating and exhausting opportunity that won’t come again for another three years.