Noella Moshi

Global Majority and Underrepresented Writing Scholar

OCLW’s Global Majority and Underrepresented Writers’ Programme is a highly competitive initiative offering eight scholarships to life-writers whose voices have historically been marginalised in publishing and academia. Alongside dedicated seminars and lectures, scholars receive skills training, mentorship, and community support. The Programme aims to ensure that the future of life-writing more fully reflects the broad and diverse range of voices that surround us.

Agents and publishers are warmly encouraged to contact scholars directly.

Noella Moshi is a Tanzanian writer whose work explores the complexities of family dynamics, intergenerational trauma, and the nuanced ways we define love. Having lived in Nigeria, South Africa, Papua New Guinea, Kenya, and now the United States, she brings a transnational lens to questions of identity and belonging. Her interest in life-writing is rooted in an urge to reflect on her twenties as a pivotal period in shaping relationships and self-understanding. She is drawn to autofiction for its ability to explore the psychological depth of real experience while retaining the literary craft that characterises her fiction. Her writing is particularly attentive to the female psyche, the body, and the ways personal narratives are entangled with broader cultural and familial patterns.

 

Project Details:

During her time at OCLW, Noella will be working on a series of autobiographical short stories examining identity and relationships across her twenties. Written in the form of autofiction, the pieces reflect on formative experiences and emotional turning points from that decade. She is developing the stories into a unified collection with the intention of securing publication.

Selected Publications/Prizes:

Noella’s short fiction has been published by Jahazi Press, Paivapo Press, Neon Lit, Black Letter Media, and Iskanchi Press Mag, with a piece forthcoming in Off Assignment. Her manuscript ‘Walking in Honey’ was longlisted for the James Currey Prize for African Literature. She has participated in workshops with Jahazi Press and the University of East Anglia, and received full scholarships to the ILS Literary Seminar in Lamu, Kenya, and the 2025 Juniper Summer Writing Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Contact Details:

Email: noella.d.moshi@gmail.com