Are you interested in travel writing? This is an excellent opportunity to apply for Narrating the Elsewhere: An Online Travel Writing Masterclass. This Masterclass is organised by Fortunate Traveller, a Nigeria-based travel journal that publishes and promotes itinerant narratives.
The Masterclass is open to writers, artists, and anyone interested in travel writing as a form for cultural, social, and economic engagement. The facilitators, ranging from renowned travel writers, travel scholar to photographer, include Emmanuel Iduma, Rebecca Jones, Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún, Ranjit Hoskote, Kene Nwatu.
The sessions, which cover nonfiction, poetry, and photography, will be run concurrently for three weekends on Zoom from June 6, 2020. The schedule is as follows:
Nonfiction Masterclass: June 6, 2020
Morning session
Emmanuel Iduma – 10am (UTC: +01:00) West Central Africa
Afternoon Session
Rebecca Jones – 2pm (UTC: +01:00) West Central Africa
Poetry Masterclass: June 13, 2020
Morning session
Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún – 10am (UTC: +01:00) West Central Africa
Afternoon session
Ranjit Hoskote – 2pm (UTC: +01:00) West Central Africa
Photography Masterclass: June 20, 2020
Morning and afternoon sessions
Kene Nwatu – 10am & 2pm. (UTC: +01:00) West Central Africa
Application Process
All interested participants are expected to book a place for the masterclass(es) they would like to join by sending a mail to submissions@fortunatetraveller.com. The subject of the email should be tagged ‘Narrating the Elsewhere Workshop’ with the masterclass they want to join. Although it is free, each masterclass has limited space on a first-come basis. The earlier, the better. Don’t miss out on this great opportunity.
About Fortunate Traveller
Fortunate Traveller is committed to publishing and promoting nonfictional, itinerant narratives. We believe in travel, and its transformational and enlightenment value, when combined with a responsibility to represent people and places ethically and thoughtfully. We encourage cosmopolitanism and people who travel, have distinct experiences and bring back their narratives.
We believe true travel can be much more than just being away or on vacation. We are as curious about places and spaces ordinarily perceived as just representations or ideas on the atlas as we are curious about destinations that are thought of as being well-trodden. We are characterizing these places and bringing them alive through the narratives of travellers, road-trippers, hikers, seafarers who have gone on journeys and have experienced something different and unique they would like to share.
About the Facilitators
Emmanuel Iduma, the author of A Stranger’s Pose, a book of travel stories, which was longlisted for the 2019 Ondaatje Prize, and The Sound of Things to Come, a novel. His stories and essays have been published widely, including in Best American Travel Writing 2020, Aperture, LitHub, The Millions, Art in America, and The New York Review of Books Daily. In 2017 he was awarded an arts writing grant from the Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation for his essays on Nigerian artists. He divides his time between Lagos and New York, where he teaches at the School of Visual Arts.
Rebecca Jones has a PhD in African Studies from the University of Birmingham, where she researched the history of southwest Nigerian travel writing in Yorùbá and English. At the Crossroads: Nigerian Travel Writing and Literary Culture in Yoruba and English is the title of the book she wrote on the research. She is the co-founder of Fortunate Traveller and editor of Africa in Words.
Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún is a Nigerian linguist, writer, scholar, and language advocate born in Ìbàdàn, Nigeria. He was educated there, in Kenya, and in the United States. His debut collection of poetry Edwardsville by Heart was published by Wisdom’s Bottom Press, Oxford, in 2018. He has also worked as a literary translator from English to Yorùbá and from Yorùbá to English. His language advocacy earned him the Premio Ostana in 2016, a prize given by Chambra D’Oc in Italy, for work and advocacy in the mother tongue, becoming the first African so-honoured. He’s currently a Chevening Research Fellow at the British Library in London.
Ranjit Hoskote (born Bombay, March 29 1969) is a contemporary Indian poet, cultural theorist and curator. Some of his collections of poetry include Zones of Assault, The Cartographer’s Apprentice, The Sleepwalker’s Archive, Vanishing Acts: New & Selected Poems 1985-2005, Central Time, Jonahwhale, and The Atlas of Lost Beliefs. His translation of a 14th-century Kashmiri mystic’s poetry has appeared as I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded. Hoskote was curator of India’s first-ever national pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2011). He has been honoured, by India’s National Academy of Letters, with the Sahitya Akademi Golden Jubilee Award and the Sahitya Akademi Translation Award.
Kene Nwatu, born in Enugu, Nigeria, is a Nigerian filmmaker and photographer exploring the themes of individual identity through psychological critique, sub-culture communities and music. He expresses stories from his trips through the mediums of photography, film and music. The work he creates convey a sense of curiosity and self-awareness, capturing moments that live on.
For more information about Fortunate Traveller or the Masterclass, kindly visit https://www.fortunatetraveller.com/
