Ellen Banda-Aaku, Goretti Kyomuhendo and Noo Saro-Wiwa discuss the implications of living in the Diaspora and writing about ‘Home’, chaired by Hannah Pool (journalist, author and curator).

Increasingly, many African writers live and work in the Diaspora. There is also a growing number of writers born in the UK or elsewhere who choose to write about Africa. The panellists in this session will attempt to address the following questions and more: As African writers living in the Diaspora, who do they write for? Who is their audience and what is their market? Are there common themes in the literature produced by migrant African writers? Has the emergence of Diasporic African literature eclipsed writing from the continent to some extent? Does the difficulty of publishing within Africa mean that we will only learn about contemporary African experiences as the Diaspora mediates them? What is the relationship between writers living in Africa and those in the Diaspora? What kind of connections and initiatives are emerging on an individual and industry level towards the sharing of skills, experiences and improving publishing prospects?