Mildred Barya

Born in Kabale District in southwest Uganda, Barya attended Mwisi Primary School and Kigezi High School. In 1996, she was awarded a full government scholarship to attend Makerere University in Uganda. She graduated in 1999 with a BA in Literature. She also while at college joined FEMRITE—Uganda Women Writers Association, where she worked closely with Goretti Kyomuhendo, then Program Coordinator, and Violet Barungi, then FEMRITE editor. In 2000, Barya took certificate courses in Information, Communication and Globalisation at the International Women's University, Vifu, in Hamburg, Germany. In 2002, she studied Editorial Practices and Publishing Management at Moi University, Eldoret, Kenya. From 2002 to 2004, she rejoined Makerere University to earn a master's degree in Organisational Psychology. In 2006–2007, Barya held a writer's residence fellowship at the Per Sesh Writing Program in Popenguine, Senegal, under the instruction of Ayi Kwei Armah. ==Writing and critical reception==

Barya's first published collection of poems, ''Men Love Chocolates But They Don't Say'', won the Ugandan National Book Trust Award for 2002. Gaaki Kigambo, a reviewer for Uganda's Sunday Monitor, claimed that "Barya's subjects are informed by the things we are used to. In this era of mobile telephony, everyone will identify with Mathematically Proven Love." Kigambo also stated that such poetry "reveals the romanticist in Barya." Regarding Barya's third collection of poems, Give Me Room To Move My Feet (2009), Peter Nazareth, Professor of English at the University of Iowa, USA, claimed that "the poet breaks down and mends herself through spirituality, religion, and poetry, bringing back to life what seemed to be dead" and that Barya "never stops loving Mother Africa." Barya's short fiction has appeared in FEMRITE anthologies, Commonwealth Broadcasting Association, African Love Stories, Picador Africa, and Pambazuka News. An excerpt from her novel What Was Left Behind earned her the 2008 Pan African Literary Forum Prize for Africana Fiction, as judged by Junot Díaz, the Dominican-American Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction writer and essayist. ==Awards==

• 2008: Pan African Literary Forum Prize for Africana Fiction • 2015: Sylt Foundation African Writer´s Residency Award • 2020: Linda Flowers Literary Award for creative non-fiction entry "Being Here in This Body" ==Published works==

Poetry • • • • "A fragile heart", "If I was" in • "Stormy heart", in Short fiction • "Raindrops", in • "Scars of Earth", in • "Effigy Child", in • "Effigy Child", in • "What was left of us", in Pambazuka News, 2008. • "Black Stone", in Per Contra: An International Journal of the Arts, Literature, and Ideas, 2012. Reprinted in New Daughters of Africa, Margaret Busby, ed., 2019. As editor • Boda Boda Anthem and Other Poems: A Kampala Poetry Anthology; a Babishai Niwe (BN) Poetry Anthology. Gilgal Media Arts, 2015. . ==References==