Manuscripts are rejected for being too cerebral, challenging, supposedly unsellable in a market that wants only apple pie. The industry is constantly described as conservative. Over the past decade, the publishing industry has become risk-averse. Because we have something to tell the world. We want to bring you the scents on our street corners, the gossip from our neighbours, the strains of the music we dance to. Short Story Day Africa was established to celebrate the diversity of Africa’s voices: to tell you who we really are and what we love: love to eat, read, talk, write about. In his acclaimed Granta piece, “How to write about Africa”, the late Binyavanga Wainaina brilliantly satirised this narrow perspective on Africa, seen all too often in both fiction and non-fiction. When Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie addressed the TED Conference in 2009, she spoke of the danger of the single story: a distorted, one-dimensional view of Africa that sees the continent only through a prism of war, disease, poverty, starvation and corruption.
