Our fifth book in this series was different from the normal books always discussed in this series. This time around, we discussed an independent print and online journal known as 'Down River Road'.
'Down River Road' is an online print journal for fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and ideas. Spearheaded by Frankline Sunday and Clifton Gachagua, the literary Journal 'Down River Road' hosts different artists who have conversations across different genres on a particular issue via literary magazines. From this pace, 'down River Road' has so far managed to produce two issues of its literary magazine of which are; Place and Ritual, which were focused on during this discussion.
The first issue of the literature magazine ‘Place’ that received close to 210 submissions invited participants, writers, and content creators to think in the line of Place. As a Nairobian, the frequently asked question via phone calls is ‘Uko Wapi’, translation to where are you. This then later gave birth to the idea of place, where are the participants writing from at that time. Also, the common saying of ‘where were you when the world stopped’ gave birth to the idea for the first literary magazine issue. Through all this, both Frankline and Clifton realized that the question of place always came to play for people are always asking each other about their whereabouts every time. This was majorly meant for participating participants to write about where they are coming from, where they are and where they want to go as well as the question about place.
The second issue of the literature magazine ‘Ritual’ received close to 400 submissions. This was a topic of interest for from this issue, everyone who submitted was free to express themselves. This issue brought a feeling of wildness in the Literary magazine series beginning from the callout itself that asked the participants to share on what they think about rituals. Through this concise and direct message, people interpreted this in their own way and thus a variety of submissions were made determinant on how an individual understood the message.
For more information please visit their website: https://downriverroad.org/about/