Edwige-Renée Dro (born 1980s) is a writer, translator and literary activist from

Côte d'Ivoire Ivory Coast, also known as Côte d'Ivoire, officially the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, is a country on the southern coast of West Africa. Its capital is Yamoussoukro, in the centre of the country, while its largest city and economic centre is ...

. She is co-founder of the literature collective Abidjan Lit.

Career

In 2014 Edwige-Renée Dro was named as one of those chosen for the

Africa39 Africa39 was a collaborative project initiated by the Hay Festival in partnership with Rainbow Book Club, celebrating Port Harcourt: UNESCO World Book Capital 2014 by identifying 39 of the most promising writers under the age of 40 with the potent ...

project intended to showcase 39 promising young African writers under the age of 40, and was included in the anthology ''Africa39: New Writing from Africa South of the Sahara'' (edited by

Ellah Allfrey Ellah Wakatama, OBE, Hon. FRSL (born 16 September 1966), is Editor-at-Large at Canongate Books, a senior Research Fellow at Manchester University and Chair of the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing. She was the founding Publishing Direct ...

, 2014). She was a PEN International New Voices award judge, and was also on the judging panel of the

Etisalat Prize for Literature The 9mobile Prize for Literature (formerly the Etisalat Prize for Literature 2013–16) was created by Etisalat Nigeria in 2013, and is the first ever pan-African prize celebrating first-time African writers of published fiction books.

in 2016. About the literature collective that she co-founded in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, she has said: "Whatever Abidjan Lit is, it wants to put books at the centre of lives and at the heart of cities, cities in Côte d’Ivoire but also cities throughout the black world." Other literary ventures with which she has been involved include Jalada and Writivism. She was awarded a Morland Writing Scholarship in 2018. In March 2020 she opened a public library with a focus on women's writing from Africa and black diaspora, located in Yopougon, Abidjan, and called "1949" to commemorate the Ivorian women who in 1949 marched against colonial power. She is a contributor to the 2019 anthology '' New Daughters of Africa'', edited by

Margaret Busby Margaret Yvonne Busby, , Hon. FRSL (born 1944), also known as Nana Akua Ackon, is a Ghanaian-born publisher, editor, writer and broadcaster, resident in the UK. She was Britain's youngest and first black female book publisherJazzmine Breary"Let' ...

References

External links

Edwige Dro
official website.
"Edwige Renée Dro at Afrolit Sans Frontières Season 2"
James Murua's Literary Blog, 22 April 2020. {{DEFAULTSORT:Dro, Edwige Renée Year of birth missing (living people) Ivorian women writers Living people