Back in January a call was made by Multimedia Box in partnership with the British Council and Zimbabwe German Society for young writers to participate in a relay authoring contest. Of the 252 entries received, four stood out from the rest and these are Lindiwe Dhlakama, Takatso Sibanda, Rejoice Moyo and Banabas Karuma.
After the four were selected, Multimedia Box who coordinated the project dubbed Collabowriters commissioned the four to write a book using relay authoring better known as exquisite corpse.
It is from this collaboration that the book ‘Sworn to the depths of Inyangani’ was birthed and it will be launched in Bulawayo tomorrow. It will be free to download on the Collabowriters website www.collabowriters.org.
Award winning writer Christopher Mlalazi, said “Collabowriters takes story writing in a completely new direction that will challenge the ability for instant creative thinking. These are the kinds of concepts that are needed in the arts that make artists think differently and hopefully prod them into producing breaking ground products.”
The project fosters cooperation rather than competition and creates a bridge to understanding the differences that unite us.
“Collabowriters is an innovative project that connects writers of different background to collaborate in writing creative fiction one chapter at a time. Writer A does first chapter, writer B reads the first chapter and composes chapter 2, Writer C reads A and B and builds Chapter 3 and so on. The exciting challenge the authors have, is to develop a story in the absence of set structure.
“Collabowriters promotes artistic collaboration, creative expression and cultural dialogue using literary arts. The aim is to create synergies between young artists of different backgrounds to work together on a fiction novel which will be published digitally and in print format,” read a statement from Multimedia Box.
Multimedia Box is a creative arts organisation which initiates, facilitates and implement the production of multimedia art which fosters positive, cultural, socio-economic transformation. They empower young and emerging artists with skills development opportunities in digital media content, illustration, photography, graphics, animation and film.
