![]() ![]() That willful sense of determination is familiar in the pages of A Girl Is a Body of Water. ![]() Feeling she was a much stronger writer, she began revising A Girl Is a Body of Water once more. By then, she’d published her first novel, Kintu, which won her the prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize. She put the novel away in 2008 and didn’t pick it up again until eight years later. Even after resubmitting new drafts in 20, multiple agents said no. Makumbi continued to work on the novel after her MFA and sent it out to agents in 2003. I gave up on being wealthy, but I had to succeed.” “All of the money I made, I put into my writing. ![]() She had been teaching at an international school there but moved to Manchester in 2001 to enroll in a graduate program in creative writing. “When I left Uganda, I sold everything I had,” Makumbi says. That she can’t stop smiling on this Zoom call isn’t surprising: A Girl Is a Body of Water is giving Makumbi her starring moment, with the novel attracting buzz in publishing circles and drawing raves in early reviews. Behind her are stacks of books growing up like trees from the floor. “I was so close to giving up,” says Makumbi, grinning, her yellow knit head wrap matching the cheery yellow walls of her living room in Manchester, England, where she also works as an adjunct professor. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |