The much anticipated African Writers event of the year took place last Saturday, the 28th of October 2017. “It is one of the most exciting and inspiring events I have ever attended in my life,” says Yinka Isabelle Owate, in an Instagram post on her page with the handle @yinxybelle.
We agree with her as it was a perfect blend of fun and education as we had amazing hosts, a comedian Funbi Comedius and OAP WFM 91.7 Laura Osubor who took the participants through the fun ride of challenges, entertainment and seminar sessions taught by powerful speakers.
It started with the red carpet which spanned between 10:30am to 11:00 am where attendees were interviewed about their expectations from the event.
Then we walked right into the event at 11:00 clock sharp kicking it off with an opening prayer and national anthem. Afterwards, The African Writers Founder, Agboola Faith Moyosore gave the welcome address where she talked about the journey to starting the African Writers and how much the African Writers Meet was necessary for the new generation of Writers in Africa.
She addressed the struggles of being a writer, getting funds and getting recognized and she expressed her joy at how the event was going to play a huge role in curbing to a large extent these issues.
A beautiful array of activities occurred afterwards. An ice-breaker session, which involved the attendees dividing themselves into groups and competing against one another for a goodie bag with lots of edibles for each of them. Each team produced a single representative and after 30 minutes of getting to know each other, their representatives/team heads came up and represented them. Team US emerged the winner as their representative Mariam Akande @awe_racle on Instagram, was able to memorize the full names of over 50 team members in the short period of time given to them.
Afterwards, we had some lovely performances from Tinuke, Peter and his group of singers, poets and dancers which had the audience in awe and we then welcomed our first speaker to the stage. Our first speaker was Olumide Holloway, Poetprenuer, strong promoter of poetry and CEO of i2x media, the organizers of Word Up, the biggest poetry event in Nigeria. He gave a heartfelt honest and higly insightful talk on building a brand as a poet and making money from the craft and he had the poets charged with inspiration and confidence as to the way forward with their careers.
We also had some more performances by Chidinmar, Ruby and Udee and we welcomed Tunde leye, blogger on TLSplace.wordpress.com, a fiction blog which has over 2 million views. He is also the author of three novellas and three novels. He gave a power-packed speech on how writers can build their brands as authors and make money from it. He emphasized the importance of starting somewhere and exploring the e-style of publishing.
We continued with some challenges and performances to ensure no dull moment and we also had Elsie Godwin, Blogger, Media personality and Founder of Elsieisy.com a widely accliamed fiction blog give her talk. She talked indepth about the art of blogging, how to make money from it and she gave some tips to young bloggers looking to start a blog.
Running towards the close of the program, the Founder of the Sparke Writers Hub and writing coach Adedoyin Jaiyesimi gave an amazing speech that made everyone in the audience emotional. She talked about her journey and advised writers to not look at making money from writing as strictly a book publishing thing. She took us on a walk through the other means of making money from writing asides from poetry, blogging and authoring a book.
The African Writers through our Founder, Faith Moyosore Agboola presented an award of recognition to all the speakers for their contribution to the writing space and gave the closing remark, thanking all the attendees and speakers for coming, partners like Lagos State government, Rewrite Agency, Mixsie Audio Books, i2x Media, Ov media, Sparkle Writers Hub, Emergence Series, African and Slaying, Tom Photos, Dabibi photography, Jasper Events and SKM entertaiment for their contributions to helping The African Writers Organizing Team.
We can boldly say it was a successful event, as lots of writers thanked the Founder and expressed their excitement about it. They gidily stated that they can not wait for 2018 edition. We can’t wait either!
You can follow African Writers on social media to know what they’re up to.
Instagram: @africanwriters
Twitter: @writegrowbecome
Visit AW website: http://theafricanwriters.com/
Notice:
Pitch Your dreams, a major highlight of the event has been moved online.
