About

Diana Santiago is a Ugandan singer, song writer, music trainer and cultural practitioner who loves reading and tries her hand at writing short stories sometimes. She worked with First Love Studios Uganda in translating Scripts into her local Language (Lugbarati), for Radio. She has participated in various literary and arts events including Writivism Festival in Kampala, Storymoja Festival, Nairobi, among others. In 2015, she trained as a Cultural Leader with Arterial Network. In 2016, Diana was part of the team at the Nairobi-based Jalada Pan-African Writers Collective, which translated Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s short story, The Upright Revolution, from English into over 30 African languages.

Summary of work

Diana Santiago is the Programmes Associate at African Writers Trust. She provides programmatic support to the Director including developing Concept Notes, Funding Proposals and Budgets. She also prepares programme level documents such as project reports and evaluation plans; and coordinates the activities of the Organisation including training workshops and conferences with international participation. In addition, she manages the African Writers Trust Social Media channels, website and digital writing activities.

Work in development

African Writers Trust proposes to launch an Online Editorial and Publishing Mentoring Scheme for five African editors and writers who have successfully participated in our editorial and publishing training workshops. The programme will pair the mentees with the more established book publishing professionals in the UK. It is our aim to provide on-going support to the trainees by offering guidance, mentoring and additional skills development as they each strive to establish themselves as editorial and publishing professionals. We believe that with this backing the mentees will positively contribute to the improvement of the quality of books published in Africa.