GORETTI KYOMUHENDO was born in 1965 and grew up in Hoima, Uganda. She holds an M.A. in creative writing from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. Kyomuhendo helped found and is now the program coordinator of FEMRITE. She is the author of Waiting: a Novel published by the Feminist Press in NYC and two previous novels, The First Daughter and Secrets No More, the winner of the Uganda National Literary Award for Best Novel in 1999 (Fountain Publishers and Femrite Publications, Ltd respectively). Kyomuhendo was the first Ugandan woman to receive an International Writing Program Fellowship at the Unversity of Iowa in the United States. She currently lives in London and is working on a new novel around the theme of immigration.

"FEMRITE gave [me] a place and space to write with a network of support and mentorship—handy when you are starting out," says MONICA ARAC DE NYEKO. De Nyeko grew up in Northern Uganda and was educated at Makerere University (Uganda) and the University of Groningen (the Netherlands) where she pursued a Masters degree in humanitarian assistance. The recipient of several awards, De Nyeko won the Caine Prize for her story "Jambula Tree" in 2007. The story was published in African Love Stories: an Anthology, edited by Ama Ata Aidoo and published by Ayebia Clarke Publishing Ltd. Another of her notable stories which was shortlisted for the Caine Prize in 2004, "Strange Fruit", can be read online.

"I write to try and understand the world. To explore why we humans do the things we do. I pose questions, not necessarily expecting an answer. I love language and words and love playing among them. Also, I want to showcase all the nuances of diverse African experiences," says DOREEN BAINGANA. Baingana is the author of Tropical Fish: Stories out of Entebbe, which won the Commonwealth Prize for First Book, Africa Region, and the AWP Award for Short Fiction. She has been a finalist twice for the Caine Prize for African Writing, and has published stories and essays in American journals such as Glimmer Train and African American Review, in The Guardian, UK, Chimurenga and Kwani?, and in the major East African newspapers. Ms. Baingana has a law degree from Makerere University, Uganda, and an M.F.A. from the University of Maryland, USA. She has taught creative writing at various institutions including the University of Maryland, the Writers Center in Bethesda, Maryland, the SLS/Kwani? literary festivals in Kenya and with FEMRITE in Uganda. She worked with Voice of America radio for ten years. Doreen Baingana is now an editor at Storymoja, a new publishing house in Nairobi, Kenya.

"Femrite is a literary home of sorts, for me. When I used to live in the US, whenever I came home to visit, the women of Femrite welcomed me. It was a place to share my interest in and ideas about writing with like-minded people. Feeling and being part of a community cannot be underestimated," says Baingana. When asked how the success of Tropical Fish has affected her, she responded, "It has validated me as a writer. One works in isolation, but the reception of a book is a public act. One is not respected as a writer for doing the main thing, writing, but for the final product, once it is recognised with awards and the like. It some ways though it is rather intimidating because I am no longer writing in a vacuum – I feel as if there is a certain expectation of me and my writing. Can I fulfill it, is the question. Do I want to? Yes and no." Baingana, who has been writing non-fiction of late, is also currently writing novel of a female rebel soldier, how she survives in man's world.

Listen to a 2005 National Public Radio interview with Doreen Baingana here.

BANANUKA JOCELYN EKOCHU holds a Bachelors degree in commerce from Makerere Unversity, a Higher Diploma in Marketing from the Makerere University Business School, and a Masters degree in Management studies and a post graduate diploma in Financial Management, both from the Uganda Management Institute. Currently she works as an accountant for the Centre for Women in Governance and edits The Candle magazine on a voluntary basis.

GLAYDAH NAMUKASA is an author and a midwife in Uganda. She has written one novel, The Deadly Ambition, and a young adult novel, The Voice of a Dream, the 2006 winner of the Macmillan literary prize for Africa in the young adult division (Macmillan, paperback, 9781405095921), and several short stories. Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies in Uganda, South Africa, Sweden, and the UK. As a member of FEMRITE, Namukasa says the group "nurtured and groomed me as un upcoming writer. I had access to creative writing textbooks, novels, I joined the Readers-Writers' club where my work was read and commented upon. I got to learn the first weaknesses in my writing and I worked with such criticism to write better. FEMRITE exposed me to writers and to the writer's world, and to the world of writing better."

When asked about her unusual dual career path—writing and midwifery, Namukasa told us,

Namukasa is currently a writer-in-residence at the Ledig House International writers colony in Hudson, New York (US). She is working on her third novel, an historical novel set in the 1960s when Uganda won its independence from the British.