Four Kenyan writers were among the emerging voices selected for the inaugural Brittle Paper Literary Festival for Aspiring Writers, a one-day online event held on August 29 on Zoom.
The Kenyan participants were:
- Owen Habel Lwanda
- Salama Wainaina
- Mwende Makulu
- Mercy Eni
Organised by Brittle Paper, the festival brought together writers from across Africa and the diaspora to celebrate African literary culture. It opened with poetry and prose readings by writers who had been published by the platform earlier in their careers.
Reading Nostalgia at the festival#
Lwanda appeared in the poetry session and read his poem Nostalgia, which Brittle Paper had previously published. Two days before the festival, he said the selection was exciting and gave him a sense of accomplishment.
“Something that you composed in the dark and now you are reading it in the light: there is nothing that is more accomplishing than that,” he said.
He said being featured represented recognition and an opportunity to join a wider literary community. With thousands of poets who could have been selected, his inclusion felt particularly meaningful.
Lwanda said he would not attend the festival; he would be part of it. He felt the event introduced his work to a larger literary audience, gave the poem legitimacy and strengthened his biography.
Having Nostalgia selected also made him consider the weight of his words.
“This is a poem that existed privately in my mind, and now strangers are going to hear each and every word that is hidden in my mind, and they are going to attach their memories to my experiences,” he said.
He added that being published and selected by Brittle Paper placed him in a literary space where writers and readers gather to take African writing seriously.
Writing home from a distance#
Nostalgia was inspired by Lwanda’s experience of being away from Kenya and the memories he carried with him.
“I wrote Nostalgia from the strange experience of being away from home, and I realised that where you come from can open an entire country inside of you,” he said.
The poem follows a traveller at a barbershop in Berlin who longs for home. Lwanda drew from his own travels far from Kenya and his memories of ordinary details of life at home, including his mother calling his name at night.
“Sometimes I would sit and remember a mango tree in your backyard, remember how the cock would crow at 6am in the morning, and remember how matatus would make noise on the road,” he said.
He wanted to explore emotional and sentimental longing through wistful thinking, reminiscing and homesickness. He said he wanted a reader who is away from home to feel the urge to return or to move through the experience of wistful thinking. He also wanted to capture the ache of remembering home from a distance and create a force that makes the reader’s mind travel backwards.
The poem, he explained, evokes conflicting emotions. The title holds that longing, carrying a place with you even when you are no longer there.
“Like you are sad about home, but you are not sad; you are happy, but you are not happy. When you read Nostalgia, you want to go back home and experience it one more time,” he said.
From private poem to communal experience#
Lwanda began getting published in 2025 and became more active with submissions in June 2026 after overcoming his reluctance to send work to literary journals. After submitting to the Afritondo Short Story Prize 2026 and being accepted, he began sending out more stories. He now has several finished stories and is waiting for the right submission opportunities.
He said Nostalgia now means something bigger to him than it did when he wrote it. He was trying to capture what it means to be away from home and how an ordinary encounter awakened memories of Kenya. With the poem presented at a literary festival, he said he is no longer the only person experiencing it.
“It is a personal poem, and now it is going to be a communal poem. I carry Kenya publicly through my voice now,” he said.
He had not expected the poem to lead him to a space where he would read it aloud to other people. Lwanda said he was looking forward to seeing the poem exist beyond the page and hearing how other people receive it. He was also excited about sharing a literary space with writers whose work he had encountered through Brittle Paper.
He hopes to meet writers who challenge the way he thinks about his own writing, readers who bring interpretations to his work, and new ideas that could take his writing where he has not taken it before.
“As a writer, you get a chance to read your work. It creates a space where writing becomes a shared experience rather than a solitary act,” he said.
He said such festivals allow writers to hear their work read aloud and connect with real audiences. They also create opportunities to meet critics, editors, publishers, novelists and readers who can become important to a writer’s journey.
Lwanda sees literary festivals as spaces for exposure, validation, collaboration, mentorship and fellowships that can continue long after an event ends.
“You get a sense of belonging; that is the most important thing of all. You realise you are not writing into emptiness,” he said.
Organiser’s view#
Tahzeeb Akram, submissions editor at Brittle Paper, said the festival was created in part to recognise writers at the beginning of their literary journeys. Akram, who joined Brittle Paper in 2021, said the writers she has published and built relationships with over the years are talented and deserve recognition and a platform.
