Sportlight On Writers From Every Culture where FIFTY city-based novelists, poets and playwrights will be representing the city’s cultural diversity as a major literature project picks up speed.
The Writers’ Gallery is an online who’s-who of the best writing talent to grace the city since the 1980s, which goes live to an international audience of readers in March.
It is the latest output of the Grassroutes Literature project, curated by Leicester University’s School of English and funded by the Arts Council England and Writing East Midlands.
Acclaimed writers who will be showcased by the new cross-cultural gallery include Leicester-born fiction author Bali Rai, a writer of young adult fiction whose latest book is called Killing Honour. The Zimbabwean city-based writer, Ambrose Musiyiwa, who is currently writing Diary of An Asylum Seeker, is another inclusion.
Organiser Dr. Corinne Fowler, a lecturer in Postcolonial Literature at Leicester University is keen to highlight the surge of transcultural writers not based in London.
She said: “Leicestershire has a dynamic literary scene and much of its writers’ poetry, drama, short stories and novels has a transcultural dimension. The Grassroutes project is not designed to contest London’s literary dominance. It aims to raise the profile of fifty of Leicestershire’s best writers, in keeping with the wider aims of the project, which is to promote greater public engagement with the region’s writing.”
Organisers explained: “Grassroutes supports the efforts of independent publishers and literature development agencies to inspire public engagement with the diverse writing cultures of multi-racial Britain.”
