Stella Gaitano
Stella Gaitano (Arabic:, b. 1979 in Khartoum, Sudan) is a literary writer and pharmacist from South Sudan. She is known for her short stories, often dealing with the harsh living conditions of people from southern Sudan, who have endured discrimination and military dictatorship, or war and displacement in the northern part of Sudan. Since the independence of South Sudan in 2011, she also has been writing about life in her new nation. Personal life and literary career. Having grown up in a neighbourhood of Khartoum before the separation of the southern from the northern part of Sudan, she  learned several languages. With her parents from the South, she spoke Latuka, a South Sudanese language, and with other people, Sudanese Arabic. At the University of Khartoum, she studied in English and standard Arabic. - For her stories, she prefers to write in Arabic, which is her language of choice for writing, but not an official language of South Sudan. In an article for the New York Times by Sudanese journalist Isma’il Kushkush, she said: “"I love the Arabic language, and I adore writing in it. It is the linguistic mold that I want to fill my personal stories and culture  in, distinguished from that of Arabs."” Further, she explained her reasons of using Arabic like this:“"It was important for me that northern Sudanese realize that there was life, values and a people who held a different culture, who needed space to be recognized and respected.”" In 2016, her "Testimony of a" "Sudanese Writer" was featured in the English literary magazine Banipal's spring edition, entitled "Sudanese Literature Today". On the occasion of an exhibition for Sudanese painter Ibrahim el-Salahi at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 2019, Gaitano was invited to use el-Salahi’s  Prison Notebook as a source of inspiration for creating an original, fictional narrative, and she focussed her story "The Rally of the Sixth of April" on a fictional Sudanese photographer documenting the Sudanese Revolution of 2018/19. The short stories in her collection "Withered Flowers" were written between 1998 and 2002, when Gitano was still a student. According to Marcia Lynx Qualey, "This early work demonstrates vibrant wordplay, fearless empathy and a deep understanding of storycraft." In 2020, her novel "Eddo’s Souls" was the first South Sudanese story to win the English PEN writers' Translates Award. According to a review  in the literary website ArabLit Quarterly, ""The novel begins across a rural context, in a small impoverished village full of mystery, rituals, and superstition, and it ends in a jam-packed city with all its complications."" Since 2012, Gaitano has been living in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, where her books are published. She works as a pharmacist, while at the same time pursuing her literary career.