Stella Gaitano on writing, clarity and revolution

Born in 1979 in the heart of Khartoum, amid political and cultural turmoil that paved the way for the division of Sudan, writer Stella Gaitano grew up in a family with deep Southern roots. Her early life mirrored the contradictions of identity and belonging, placing her between two distinct worlds: one that spoke about her, and the other that spoke through her.

Stella studied pharmacy at the University of Khartoum, but soon found her way into journalism and literature, later becoming one of the most prominent female voices to embody the tragedy of war and division from a deeply human perspective.

During her university studies, she became involved in intellectual and political debates, and it was there that her literary consciousness took shape.

Stella was influenced by a number of international and Arab writer, including Tayeb Salih, Gabriel García Márquez, and Isabel Allende. But she was keen to create her own unique voice that did not blend into any school. “I don't want to be a copy of anyone else, I want to be a mirror that reflects a reality that many dare not look at.”

She embodies the cultural and political divide that Sudan has experienced for decades. She is a daughter of the north in terms of language and culture, and a daughter of the south in terms of roots and memory. Through this overlap, her literary works create a space for dialogue between the two identities. She believes that writing “is not a means of escaping division, but rather of understanding and coexisting with it.”

This dual sense of belonging has given her a humane perspective that transcends political boundaries. When she moved to Juba after the secession in 2012, she discovered that returning to the “motherland” did not necessarily mean finding home. She didn't return to a homeland, but “to a question she still haven't found the answer to.”

For her, home is no longer a geographical place but “a state of reconciliation with oneself and others, with history and memory.” She sees migration not as an escape but as “a space to reflect on the meaning of true return.”

Stella is not only a writer, but also a social and cultural activist who believes that culture and art can be effective tools for change. “Awareness is the shortest route to helping people achieve their aspirations. We cannot build a homeland without first understanding ourselves.”

She launched the "Make a Difference with a Book" initiative, which succeeded in collecting more than 10,000 books to establish public libraries in Darfur and South Sudan. For her, books are "silent tools of liberation" and libraries are spaces for resistance against ignorance and violence.

Stella considers writing not an aesthetic luxury, but a moral and political stance.
“Writing was not a choice, it was the only way to say that I existed,” she once said, a conviction that shapes her literary practice to this day.

In her works, from Withered Flowers (2002) to The Return (2015) and Edo’s Souls (2019), we find a dominant presence of issues of war and displacement, but she does not write merely to document tragedy, but to deconstruct it.

In The Return,she depicts the dreams of southerners returning to their new country after secession, torn between nostalgia and disappointment, between the promise of homeland and the betrayal of reality.

In Edo’s Souls, her most important novel, she delves into the depths of the Sudanese experience through different generations of women who carry the memory of war, departure, death and love. The novel moves between north and south, between village and city, between reality and myth, to re-raise the question of identity from a resistant female perspective. “My female characters are not looking for heroism but for survival. And survival itself in a world like this is a kind of heroism.” She notes.

Stella writes in Arabic, a language considered by some to be a “colonial tool,” but she rejects this classification, she see language not as a political prison, but a space for freedom. Arabic does not belong to anyone; “it is part of our African heritage, and we must reclaim it in our own way.”

She believes that translation is a necessity, not a luxury: A writer who writes in one language imprisons their voice in a small cage, but “translation is the key that opens doors to the world.”

Stella's narrative style is characterized by the intertwining of the realistic and the symbolic, as she draws on myth and collective memory to retell the present from a spiritual and human perspective. She creates a world where spirits coexist with humans, and memory with dreams, in a language that combines poetry and political precision. This blend has made her one of the most prominent figures in post-war Sudan and South Sudanesse literature.

Themes of loss, motherhood, departure and grief recur in Stella's work, but she does not see them as individual experiences, but as the collective memory of a society burdened by war: “Loss is not the end, but the beginning of a new awareness. From the womb of pain is born the determination to live.”

Her female characters have an existential depth that is rare in modern Sudanese literature. They oscillate between silence and disclosure, between survival and suicide, but they all possess the capacity for resistance. In Edo’s Souls, Stella does not merely recount violence, but reveals how it is reproduced across generations and how literature can be a tool to break this cycle

After moving to Juba and then living in exile for periods of time, Stella says that exile was a necessary experience: she sees migration not as an escape but as “a space to reflect on the meaning of true return: “Exile gave me distance to see things clearly from afar, the wounds seem clearer, but you also learn how to bandage them without bleeding again.”

Stella believes that literature is not required to spread hope as much as it is called upon to ask questions. “Literature does not change the world,” she says “but it makes us see it clearly. And clarity is the beginning of every revolution.”

That is why she refuses to use writing as a means of propaganda or consolation, but rather considers it an act of daily resistance. She writes about pain, not to glorify it, but to understand it and prevent it from recurring.

Stella Gaitano's influence extends to an entire generation of Sudanese women writers who found in her experience a model of literary courage. She opened the door to a new feminist discourse that combines the local and the global, the recognition of pain and the determination to overcome it. Through her participation in literary festivals in Nairobi, Kampala and Cape Town, she has become an African voice redefining the meaning of belonging after war.

Ultimately, Stella carries a simple yet profound message: that confronting the past is an unavoidable necessity. “We are tired of repeating tragedies. It is time to look in the mirror and say to ourselves: enough.”

For her, writing is not only a documentation of the memory of war, but an attempt to build a more humane future. It is an invitation for the reader to see themselves, their wounds, and their unanswered questions in her texts. She sums up her literary philosophy in one sentence:
“For me, writing is not about death, but about the desire to live, despite all we have lost.”

Recently Stella Gaitano has received the “Writer of Courage” Award for 2025, which was presented to her on October 10, 2025, during the PEN Pinter Awards ceremony at the British Library in London. She was chosen as the Writer of Courage by the Sudanese-British writer Leila Abouzeid, the 2025 PEN Pinter Award winner, in recognition of her strong commitment to freedom of expression and her courageous stance in the face of oppression and challenges.

Stella Gaitano is not just a writer from Sudan or South Sudan, but a human voice reminding us that literature, when written with sincerity, can be a compass towards coexistence and peace. She writes as she lives: boldly, with the belief that presence itself is an act of resistance.