A Long House is happy to announce Clarie Gor and Kelechi Njoku as its inaugural Rajat Neogy Editorial Fellows. The fellowship, named in honor of the late founding editor of Transition, one of the most influential literary magazines and frontier for intellectual debates to ever come out of the continent, was conceived to foster editorial talent on the continent, a crucial part of any viable literary ecosystem on the continent. It will take place over the course of 2022, each fellow will receive editorial education and support, and $1000 each.
The continent has produced its fair share of singular literary stars in these past decades since the postcolonial epoch. But there is still a prevalent notion on the continent that editorial work is obscure, unrewarding and a waste of labor, literary gift, or sensibility. Yet we know the editorial community is a significant part of any literary ecosystem. This dearth of editorial talent on the continent often results in the mistranslation of sensibility, or subjectivity when foreign editors take on African books. We conceived this fellowship in response to that. We conceived of this fellowship in response to this.
For this inaugural edition, we received numerous applications from all over the continent, after a rigorous selection process, we ultimately decided on these candidates because of their brilliance, deep interest in the African literary ecosystem, and imaginative strategies on how to not only make room for black writers, thinkers, artists, but also, a black audience.
Please, join us in welcoming:
Clarie Gor
Clarie Gor is a Kenyan writer and Journalist. She is currently interested in creating work that centers Black women and feminisms; that is an exploration of the various dynamics of violence and the possibilities of collective imagination and conversation. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in Equipoise, the 2020 anthology of the Nairobi Writing Academy, Catapult, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Audacity, Kalahari Review and others. Her flash creative nonfiction essay, ‘This Song My God, I Have Wept!’ won the February 2019 Igby Prize for nonfiction. All her work is archived on https://clariesramblings.com. She lives in Kenya.
Kelechi Njoku
Kelechi Njoku has worked with several organisations devoted to spotlighting literature in Africa—the Afritondo Short Story Prize; Purple Hibiscus Creative Writing Workshop; Dusty Manuscript Prize, Nigeria; Aké Arts and Book Festival; and Writivism Short Story Prize. He has edited three issues of Bakwa magazine, two of 14, and several other book and literary projects with independent publishers, Kachifo and Narrative Landscape Press. His writing appears in adda, Litro, This Is Africa, and Brittle Paper.
In 2020, he was writer-in-residence at Black Rock, Dakar, Senegal. He lives in Nigeria.
