audiences

Session 1: Embracing the diaspora/s – finding our audiences across the world

How do you find your audiences and once found how do you develop them? We will be sharing our experiences and ideas of building audiences locally, nationally and internationally.

Session 2: Minding the gap – strategies for reaching new audiences

Manuscripts by writers of colour are often rejected by publishers because, apparently, the writing is not ‘universal’ which simply means that it does not appeal to the mainstream. We have read, listened to anecdotes of rejected writers and discussed this for a long time now. But like most things, writers of colour cannot sit back and expect the market for their writing to just happen. It is time to come up with strategies on how to awaken existing markets for our writing, create new ones and sensitise those that seem to be out of our reach. We must do it ourselves – so come on fighters!

Panellists: Jennifer Makumbi, Yvonne Battle-Felton and Naniso Tswai