Amelia B. Kyazze – Writer, Photographer and Editor
Author
Amelia B. Kyazze is a writer, photographer and editor based in southeast London. Her debut novel, Into the Mouth of the Lion, was published in May 2021. Based on her notebooks and photographs from when she worked in Angola in 2002, the book is about a photographer searching for her missing sister at the end of Angola's civil war.
In September 2022 this was followed by Ahead of the Shadows, the continuing story of Lena, a war photographer, working in DR Congo and Darfur. It is also the parallel story of Lena's son, Bene, walking the streets of Paris for one night eighteen years later, on his way to meet his father in Nairobi, a man he's never met.
More background: for 18 years she worked with humanitarian aid organisations such as Oxfam, Save the Children and the British Red Cross. She travelled to more than forty countries documenting humanitarian crises and efforts to rebuild or prepare for future disasters. Her work took her to Angola, where Into the Mouth of the Lion is set, as well as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Darfur (Sudan), Uganda, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Nepal, India and many other countries across Africa, Asia and Southern Europe.
She now works part-time as a professional editor and mentor to other writers, while running creative writing workshops based on her methodology Writing the 7 Senses (see below). With her experience working as a freelance editor for companies such as Thames & Hudson, Ibidem (linked to Columbia University Press), as well as individuals writing memoir, fantasy, romance and literary fiction, she has a wealth of experience to draw upon. In 1-2-1 work or Author Anchoring sessions, Amelia uses fun creative writing techniques to help with flow and to focus on an author's particular needs. Together we can devise a bespoke package of editing and development to help you make your writing the best that it can be.
Amelia also writes short stories, and Covid in Brixton, a light-hearted story about friendship during the time of the pandemic, was story of the month for the Byte Shorts showcase in May 2020. Her flash fiction pieces were included in the National Flash Fiction Day Anthology 2019 and 2021. She is a founding member of the new Breakthrough Books Collective, and has a short story, "Seize Your Freedom With Both Hands" in their first anthology, Taking Liberties (2023). In addition, she writes book reviews of children's literature.
She was encouraged to find that she was long-listed for the Mslexia Woman’s First Novel Prize 2017.
In January 2020 she started a new venture, Writing the 7 Senses, facilitating creative writing workshops for children and adults, in schools and at local festivals. She was awarded a London Borough of Culture grant in May 2022 to run creative writing workshops in schools and libraries. She also serves as Trustee for the Oxford Centre for Fantasy, a new creative writing charity.
As part of her humanitarian work, she has delivered speeches in Geneva, Brussels and at UN side events in New York. She has been interviewed by CNN, Al-Jazeera and many other news outlets. Her non-fiction work has been published in the Huffington Post, the International Review of the Red Cross, ODI/HPN and many other places.
Her photography has been published in a series of books, The Humanity in the Landscape Series, available on Blurb.com. She has participated in solo and group shows of her photography in New York, London and Oxford. Her photography portfolio can be viewed here.
