Somalilandsun – As part of Hargeisa International Book Fair at Hargeisa a number of seasoned literary personalities in the field of creative writing among them author Nadifa Mohamed will provide a course on creative writing in Somali language at the Hargeisa Cultural Center, from 2nd -7th August 2014
For the fourth year running Hargeisa International Book Fair will be dedicating three successive days for an introductory creative writing course. The roster will be small, so the organisers will employ first-come-first-serve policy. For many people, it may seem as a farfetched dream to talk about creative writing in Somali, when the language still lacks a standardised agreed-upon version to use. But, it is exactly that fact which prompted us to shoulder the burden of this mountainous and ambitious project. Among many others, there are three major factors which are instrumental to push this work forward and encourage those who are involved: the way in which Somalis everywhere embrace their language; the growing number of youth who show strong propensity for engaging in such fields as journalism, and fiction writing like the short story, the script writing, and even whole novel; and perhaps most important of all is the enthusiasm, excitement and dedication shown by those who have participated in the previous sessions.
Here, we thought it would be worthwhile to utilize the available expertise of seasoned literary personalities in the field of creative writing both in English and Somali to give proper guidance to this aspiring young generation by way of holding seminars and similar training courses. Saeed Salah Ahmed, Said Jama Hussein, Mohamed Hirsi Guleid assisted by Saddam Hussein Arab will deliver the three days intensive course.
Nadifa Mohamed, one of the most brilliant young British novelists, and author of “The Orchard of Lost Souls”, is also a guest of this year’s Hargeisa International Book Fair. She will have audience with the course trainees and share with them her experience in the skills of creating prose writing, citing some of its major elements like developing the characters, story line of the novel, etc.
At this initial stage of the course, our main concern is to emphasize the use of correct grammar—the most essential element in all writings—coupled with fundamental principles of creative prose writing in Somali. Once the students tackle these basic rules, we can confidently move on towards the publication of the relevant guiding modules for the various forms of creative prose writing—the drama, the short-story, the novel, the play, etc.
For those who are interested to join the programme as trainees, please send an email to courses@redsea-online.com and cc to info@hargeysabookfair.com with your details: Name, Date and place of birth, Telephone number to contact you. The deadline for applications is the 1/08/2014.
