Get Gloriah to Concordia

Greetings, everyone! My name is Gloriah Amondi, and I am trying to raise money to earn a Master's in Creative Writing degree at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. This truly is a dream come true.

For as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to be a storyteller. I grew up with the stories my father told us kids, but where I come from, in a small place in Western Kenya, you (if you’re lucky) can become a lawyer, a doctor, an engineer, or a teacher – never a writer. So a lawyer I became, and that would have been it – a young, adequately successful lawyer earning a reasonable salary while bemoaning the universal struggles of the legal career – until I realized I still had a chance at storytelling. I started writing and submitting stories to journals and to local newspapers, and that’s how I joined journalism and storytelling.

Over the years, I have regularly put my work out there in literary spaces, through which we have interacted with some of you. For instance, I was the International Literary Seminar Kenya contest winner. Some of you, however, may have read my work in literary journals like Lolwe, Kalahari Review, Ibua Journal, Dooney’s Café and others; some may have read me at Bikozulu (the blog). You may have followed my work in the newspapers (first Standard, then Nation) or you may have come across my articles in Alliance for Science publications and in spaces like AMKA. Or, finally, maybe you have read my pieces on Facebook.

Now, an even bigger dream is coming true, perhaps the ultimate one: I have been admitted to the Concordia University (Montreal) prestigious graduate Creative Writing program, starting this fall. To get there, however, I must raise some significant amount of money – which, unfortunately, at the moment, is beyond my financial ability. Concordia has kindly offered to cover my full tuition, for which I am grateful - but that is not enough for me to be able to come to Canada.

I come to you, appealing for your assistance in helping me achieve this target and secure my attendance so I can expand my writing to global spaces. This dream is bigger than just me. My getting to the program will also give hope to many others like me from my country and from the East African region: the young writers like me who only have their dreams and stories which the world could hopefully benefit from reading and hearing about. A rich, international literary community filled with voices from around the world benefits everyone.

Any help will be very highly appreciated. Please consider donating and sharing.

Thank you!