Women Writing Africa is a project of cultural reconstruction that aims to restore African women's voices to the public sphere. Through the collection of written and oral narratives to be published in six regional anthologies, the project will document the history of self-conscious literary expression by african women throughout the continent. We have deliberately broadened the definition of "writing" to include songs, praise poems, and significant oral texts, as well as fiction, short stories, drama, letters, and journals.
Women Writing Africa will preserve and publish individual pieces of women's writing to allow for new readings of African women's history. We know that, traditionally, women in Africa have been storytellers, passing along histories of their communities from generation to generation. We also know that these stories have been commemorated in written and oral narration. In bringing together women's voices, Women Writing Africa will illuminate for a broad public the neglected history and culture of African women, we have shaped and been shaped by their family, societies, and nations.

Women Writing Africa will bring African women's literature to readers around the world by:

• publishing six anthologies of African women's written and oral compositions, organised by region (North, East, Southern, Central, Wet, and the Sahel);
• publishing a series of individual books by and about African women.

  Women Writing Africa will promote the study of African women's writing by:

• creating repositories in Africa for the narratives that have been collected
• establishing a computer network for experts in African women's history and culture;
• promoting egalitarian partnerships between African and non-African writers and scholars.

  To contribute to Women Writing Africa or for more information contact:
  Project Coordinator The Feminist Press at CUNY
  Wingate Hall/City College Convent Avenue
  at 138 Street New-York, NY 10031