A series of online discussions - Virtual Gatherings - with the award-winning author Zukiswa Wanner, exploring contemporary African Literature with authors.
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi is a Ugandan novelist. Her first novel, Kintu, won the Kwani? Manuscript Project in 2013. Her second book is a collection of short stories, Manchester Happened for UK/Commonwealth publication and Let's Tell This Story Properly (for US/Canada publication), due out in Spring 2019. It was shortlisted for The Big Book Award: Harper's Bazaar. Her third book, The First Woman for UK/Commonwealth and A Girl is a Body of Water for US/Canada publication, is due out in Autumn 2020. Jennifer is the recipient of the 2018 Windham-Campbell Literature Prize. She won the 2014 Global Commonwealth Short Story Prize for her short story Let's Tell This Story Properly. She is a Cheuse International Writing Fellow (2019) and a KNAW-NAIS Resident (2021). She holds a PhD from Lancaster University and is a Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University.
As Kirabo enters her teens, questions begin to gnaw at her – questions which the adults in her life will do anything to ignore. Where is the mother she has never known? And why would she choose to leave her daughter behind? Inquisitive, headstrong, and unwilling to take no for an answer, Kirabo sets out to find the truth for herself.
Her search will take her away from the safety of her prosperous Ugandan family, plunging her into a very different world of magic, tradition, and the haunting legend of ‘The First Woman’.
