Kenya’s vibrant literary scene has attracted the attention of some of the world’s literay giants. Otieno Amisi reports ahead of a major cultural event scheduled for Nairobi next month.
The Kenyan literary scene is abuzz with excitement as the country prepares to host nearly one hundred writers, poets, publishers and literary agents from across the world. The literary festival, dubbed Kwani? Litfest 2006, is billed to be the world’s biggest literary event in recent years, and follows closely in the footsteps of Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka’s visit to the country.
According to Binyavanga Wainaina of Kwani?, the festival will include literary seminars, creative writing workshops, lectures, book signings and readings conducted by award-winning authors, editors, publishers and literary agents from Africa and around the world. Part of the event will be held in the coastal town of Lamu. Over the Christmas season – actually between December 11 and 28 – both established and upcoming writers will be treated to a variety of interactive events and forums, including workshops and training seminars.
The festival will be part of the Summer Literary Seminars, an annual event that brings some of the finest American, Canadian, European, Russian and African writers and scholars from around the globe to share their experiences and knowledge with upcoming writers, scholars and editors in East Africa. Among the luminaries will be Kenya writers M.G Vassanji and Shailja Patel. The Canadian based Vassanji is probably best known locally for his novel, The Gunny Sack (1989). He was born in Kenya in 1950 and brought up in Tanzania. Interestingly, he holds a Phd in nuclear physics from the University of Pennsylvania. He edits The Toronto South Asian Review and has also published No New Land (1991), Uhuru Street (1991, short stories), and The Book of Secrets (1994). Vassanji won the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1990 and the Giller Prize (in 1994).
Shailja Patel performs to standing international ovations and has won accolades for her literary works on women’s rights. Her works have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies and have been translated into Gujurati and Italian. The Summer Literary Seminars are the work of a charitable, non-profit literary organization based in the United States and affiliated with Herzen University in St. Petersburg, Russia. The first SLS was held in St. Petersburg in 1999. In the past eight years, exceptional writers from around the globe, including Pulitzer Prize winners, U.S. Poet Laureates, National Book Award winners, Commonwealth Prize Winners, and Caine Prize winners, have participated in and taught at the seminars. In 2001, SLS launched a sister programme, SLS-Kenya, in conjunction with Kwani Trust, a Nairobi-based literary outfit that publishes a regional creative writing journal.During the festival, SLS-Kenya will host more than a dozen international faculty members, including Mikhail Iossel, the founder and director or SLS, novelists Teresa Svoboda and Padgett Powell, plus editors and publishers of literary journals and magazines, such as Ntone Edjabe, founding editor of South Africa’s Chimurenga magazine and Rob Spillman, editor of Tin House, an American literary magazine.
A series of side events are expected to draw hundreds of members of the public in both Nairobi and Lamu. Kwani? Litfest 2006 is also sponsored by the Ford Foundation. Kwani?was founded in 2003 by a young Kenyan writer and winner of the 2002 Caine Prize, Binyavanga Wainaina. Binyavanga says the organization supports systems for new writers and their works through establishing regional and global literary linkages with publishers, editors, agents and policy-makers. “We want to stimulate imaginative and creative exchanges that contribute to the global literary conversation,” he says.More than 20 new writers have been published in the last three issues of Kwani?, including Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, who won the Caine Prize for African Writing 2003, Parselelo Kantai, who was short-listed for the Caine Prize for African Writing 2004 and Andia Kisia, who has been awarded a fellowship at the prestigious Royal Court Theatre in London.Over the years, Kwani? has positioned itself in the East African literary scene as a serious publication receiving accolades from major literary figures and review columns across the region.
Cross Posted At Creative Ventures
Dear KBW Member,