Musing on Litt-World 2009

Litt-World 2009 is over. Last week I:

• pondered the implications for my WIP (work in progress) of novelist Davis Bunn’s workshops on writing the breakout novel.
• took avid notes on the process of editing from a gifted Filippina editor, Yna Reyes.
• lined up three possible workshops where I can teach skills to Africans who want to write for the children in their communities, including one in Kisumu, Kenya, the heart of last year’s post-election violence.
• discovered interest in my HIV story “God Loves Me When I Hurt” from publishers in India as well as Burundi, Ghana and Kenya.
• found promising writers from Nigeria and Indonesia who are eager for on-line mentoring.
• enjoyed catching up with former student Nerea Thigo of Kenya (pictured).
• laughed at the ingenuity of Czech publisher, Alexandr Flek, who set up a web-based club of Beta testers and donors to raise funds and field test his new translation of the Bible—essentially the first in 400 years. 
• marveled at the faithfulness of the publisher who prints 2-500 copies of significant titles for the small population who reads Croatian.
• enjoyed the gasps of Africans seeing the Great Rift Valley for the first time.
• ate way too much, stayed up way too late.
• Wished I had a video camera to capture Robin Jones Gunn and Alice Lawhead really getting into it with the African singers and dancers who helped us celebrate the last night.

It was a stimulating and exhausting opportunity that won’t come again for another three years.

The sun sets over the Great Rift Valley as our bus returns to Brackenhurst Conference Center from an outing to Lake Naivasha.