Sani Aishat: My GCLF Experience

The Garden City Literary Festival is another medium to bring back the reading culture. Many have observed  that this generation, my generation, read less and that our reading culture diminishes by the day. 

Open Mic Session

The whole festival was amazing and the participation by the individuals was been tremendous. The theme for this year's lecture makes it more interesting for me because of the undermining of female writers in African literature. This topic enables the female writers the opportunity to be heard by all.

Doreen Baingana facilitated the fiction workshop

Another thing that I like  about this edition of GCLF is that all the workshops, though didn't hold more than a few hours, really empowered people who attended it as their creative writing improved. Well for me. I really gained a lot attending this year's festival and the lectures were an eye opener to me because I learnt that being a writer is not easy. I learnt that for me to become an exceptional writer, it entails a lot of hardwork. Most of the facilitators and speakers emphasised that what makes a writer exceptional is for the writer to write, not just for writing sake but to endeavour to paint a picture of realism because literature cannot exist in isolation of the society and in so doing should give their writing their best shot.

Obari Gomba facilitated the Poetry Workshop

So far, so good, the fifth edition of the GCLF has been the best for me. There is still more room for improvement. I hope the next edition would even be better than this. 

Sani Aishat is a final year student of the Department of English, University of Port Harcourt, Rivers state. She was a participant at the Garden City Literary Festival, 2012.