Something to Write Home About, subtitled Reflections from the Heart of History, shows a side of journalists the public does not often get to see.
Something to Write Home About is a collection of more than 90 contributions of prose and poetry, from journalists around the world, all reflections of how they have been moved by events they have covered.
”Journalists who are encouraged not to let their personal feelings enter their reports, have given us a rare glimpse of the gamut of feelings they experience while doing their jobs,” the publishers said in a note released to coincide with the release of the book co-edited by husband-and-wife team Claude Colart and Sahm Venter.
Of the 90 contributors to this book, 30 hailed from Africa: South Africa, Togo, Zimbabwe, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Botswana.
Writing in the foreword Anglican Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu said: ”This anthology of deeply moving stories reveals that journalists are not callous, hardhearted cynical operatives moving like predators after their prey.
”They are wonderful sensitive human beings who laugh and cry, who love and hate, who are calm, who are frightened, who are brave and who are sometimes cowardly, but who are ultimately people who care, who care about others and what is done to and for them, who care about our world and hope that they might just have helped to make it a little more hospitable to love and compassion and laughter and who have given their services for free to honour their fallen comrades.
”They are beautiful people and some of them have touched my life and I am just that bit a better person for that.”
The contributors gave their work for free and royalties were to be donated to two funds dedicated to the memory of journalists killed while on assignment. – Sapa