As far as vocation goes, Troy’s got a vast imagination. He hasn’t been content to merely ascend in his own literary pursuits, but he’s also taken it upon himself to nurture more breakthroughs for others in his mold. It takes a certain largeness of mind to ride above the vocational trauma that comes with choosing the path of a fiction writer, & to add the extra dimension of mentoring others like yourself. To rise and to raise, to pioneer and to platform.
Though based in London, Troy’s had quite an effect on literary circles back home in Nairobi. The team back here are witnesses of that, as this very piece was prompted by several 254 acquaintances in the narrative fiction realm who attested to us about the effect of bro’s journey on their own. It makes perfect sense he’s spent the bulk of his life there, right to the point of his graduation from University of Nairobi’s school of law & the publishing of his prize-winning short story “For What Are Butterflies Without Their Wings”.
Of all our main draws to Troy, Lolwe is the foremost. It’s a pan-African literary arts platform that champions promising work by authors from the region.
While still on the point of platforming, enter Rwandan-Namibian writer Remy Ngamije!
Similarly based away from his birth country, Remy too is on that “rising & raising” wavelength. His own outstanding work includes his 2019 debut novel “The Eternal Audience of One” & his 2024 collection “Only Stars Know the Meaning of Space”.
In terms of platforms, he’s the founder of Doek, an independent arts organisation supporting the literary arts, in addition to being the editor-in-chief of Doek! Literary Magazine, the first sole literary magazine in Namibia.
As far as championing writers from their own scenes, one might wonder what lessons our own scene in 256 can pick from Troy and Remy. Well for one, it would do us well to first assess what we have happening on the scene: We do have literary magazines with reasonable submission criteria and incentives, though we could use more dissemination of awareness about them among authors. We even have a few book events, though for the most part they are social-centric and largely not author-targeted. The prevailing concepts in the space could use a narrowing of focus. For instance, it’d be immensely helpful for visionaries in the space to pioneer fantasy conventions, when it comes to narrative fiction. This is especially helpful since consumers are mostly always as refined as a market’s authors get. On that point, author tutorships through basics like voice, formatting and submission tips would come in handy. Added to that, any craft thrives in proportion to how motivated its practitioners are. Beyond just cultural factors, for instance, there’s a reason why we have relatively few novel-length works on the scene in relation to other countries in the region. That intersection between culture and motivation is a subject we’d like to explore in upcoming features. But for now, kudos to Troy and Remy for standing out as inspiring templates, more than they know, we bet!
