History in the making. Be part of it.

Summer Literary Seminars in Kenya (SLS-Kenya), the only creative writing program of its kind in East Africa, will be held for the fourth time this August. SLS-Kenya is the “sister” project of our SLS-Russia program—the largest independent international writing program in the world; since 2001 we’ve been working to translate and transplant the invaluable components of Russia’s nine successful years to our Kenya program, while simultaneously fostering the unique development of SLS-Kenya. Working together with our partners at the Kwani? Magazine and Trust (East Africa’s most prominent and exciting literary organization), the SLS-Kenya program offers a two week literary journey unlike any other: world class workshop instructors, stimulating readings and lectures, and all the typical components of a creative writing program—with an emphasis on facilitating personal connections between writers living in different countries, on different continents, and in separate hemispheres.

SLS-Kenya is a one-of-a-kind program that endeavors to immerse its participants in Kenya’s—indeed, all of East Africa’s—inordinately vibrant and diverse artistic scene. We invite you to join us.

At this time, in light of the recent (and still ongoing) heart-breaking events in the country, we no longer plan to hold SLS-Kenya this August--instead, we're planning for SLS-Kenya to be held in December 2008, the 14th-28th. We wish we could offer more information at this time; but alas...
We'll be announcing shortly the state of the Kenya program on our website.

CONTEST

02-11-08 - The 2008 SLS-Russia/Kenya literary contest is officially over. We thank everyone who took part in it. The sheer number of extremely strong submissions, out of the total number of close to 700, made the selection process difficult, and we are deeply grateful, for their careful deliberation, to the dedicated SLS readers and the final judges -- Ann Lauterbach in poetry (she had kindly agreed, at the last moment, to replace Robert Hass, who has to drop out), Fiona McCrae in fiction, and Josip Novakovich/Mikhail Iossel in non-fiction. We would like to offer our sincerest congratulations to the contest winners: Jenny Zhang (Iowa City, IA) in fiction, Mark Conway (Avon, MN) in poetry, and Kimberly Elkins (New York, NY) in non-fiction. Their brief bios, as well as those of the second and third place winners in each category, will be posted on this website shortly. The winning entries will be published in a forthcoming issue of The Walrus and Maisonneueve, two of Canada's leading literary and general-interest publications. Again, we are thankful to all the contest participants. In the next few days we will be contacting certain entrants who, in the opinion of the judges, submitted extremely high quality work with offers of tuition scholarships to SLS Russia/Kenya (the latter of which has been rescheduled for December of this year, due to the recent political developments and subsequent unrest in that country). We wish all entrants much success in their noble literary endeavours.

2008 KENYA AND RUSSIA CONTEST

This year we're trying something entirely new, by merging together our SLS-Russia and SLS-Kenya contests. Please see our contest page for full details.

DECEMBER PROGRAM PUSHED BACK TO AUGUST 2008

Dear friends of SLS,

While we simply can't wait to see our friends in Kenya and to revisit, once again, that glorious land, because of a variety of factors, SLS-Kenya will next be held in August 2008, and each August thereafter. We are very excited about this improved schedule, and we look forward to see some of you with us in Kenya next August!

Revised program details will be posted on the website soon.

All the best,

SLS

Past SLS Kenya News

SLS is pleased to announce that its 2007 contest will be held in affiliation with St. Petersburg Review (USA) and Maisonneuve (Canada) magazines, two of the most interesting publications in North America.

Final Judges:
Poetry: Robert Hass
Fiction: Fiona McCrae, Editor-in-Chief of Graywolf Press
Nonfiction: Josip Novakovich

The authors of the winning poem and prose entries will receive airfare, accommodations, and a full tuition waiver to the 2007 Summer Literary Seminars program in Kenya, AND publication of the winning entry in one of these magazines--fiction and poetry in St. Petersburg Review, nonfiction in Maisonneuve.

See the contest page for complete submission guidelines.

1/30/06 - Doreen Baingana (SLS-Kenya 05-06 faculty) and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (SLS-Kenya 06 faculty) to read at upcoming events at the New School in New York City; both are moderated by Jeffery Renard Allen (SLS-Kenya 06/ SLS-Russia 04-05 faculty).

The New School Events

All events are at 66 West 12th Street unless otherwise noted. 6:30 p.m., room 510. $5.

Monday, February 5

African Fiction in America, American Fiction in Africa
With Bayo Ojikutu, author of Free Burning; Mohammad
Naseehu Ali, author of The Prophet of Zongo Street;
and Doreen Baingana, author of Tropical Fish: Tales from
Entebbe. Jeffery Renard Allen, moderator.

Monday, February 12

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of Half of a
Yellow Sun. Jeffery Renard Allen, moderator.

I trust you are all well. We are looking forward to seeing you in Nairobi this December.

Some of you may be wondering -why Kenya? What is there of interest in a country so far away, for a budding writer?

Well there are the obvious things: Kenya is a beautiful country. The light, the wide empty spaces, the game, the beaches, Lamu the island that is like nowhere else really - the most ethnically diverse country on the continent of Africa.

Kenya is also a new country. 40 years old - and the interest there, certainly for me as a writer, is the excitement in working in a place with shifting foundations, with a consensus not yet established, with new languages ideas and identities in perpetual formation. This isa place where the power of the individual is not flattened to satisfy a product or a brand - where new districts and pioneers are still building their cabins and free lives; where you are your own infrastructure - and your fate is by no means secure.

Of course, in the flattened vision a certain part of the world, Kenya merits attention when an elephant dies, or when people die horribly somewhere, or when we fulfill the narrow clichés that America and Europe continue to establish about the rest of the world. It is comical - when I teach in the US (from January to June) - I am alwayswatching the newsin panic because far out there in the boogah boogah world where real things happen it seems that WAR, TERRARRISM AND EVEEL are rampaging the countryside and the city and no human should set foot.

For me it is always a relief to come back home - to see people smiling and not grimacing; to be able to feel free to be a three dimensional person, not clamped in by highways and credit ratings - to see family and friends. To eat fresh meat and vegetables - that are not grinning maniacally at me, junkie veggies - with super fresh, super green, super additives... I love America - but the paranoia about the rest of the world is bewildering.

It is exciting to sit down and work with a team of people at Kwani? who see their job as getting new writers to write about the millions of towns and lives and accents and languages that have never been written about. To deal with readers who are, for the first time, seeing themselves reflected back from a printed page.

I have been made aware that there have been some stories in the American media about terrorist attacks in Kenya, and about deaths and fire in Mathare - a slum in Nairobi. Certainly there is much trouble in Mathare right now. Unfortunately there is always much trouble in Mathare - and until the government takes time to deal with people's problems there, there will be. I have been a visitor and a friend of people there for a few years now (used to live in a hostel there called Beverly Hills hostel) - I called up the hostel there and they said that the problem has mostly been contained and that community leaders have been meeting to resolve the problem.

I will be visiting Mathare at the end of the week to see for myself, and console those who have lost.

The rest of the city is pretty much as it is always.These problems - for all sorts of reasons - never spill over into the rest of the city. As a matter of fact - the city centre is the safest it has been since the 1970s. Good policing and better lighting - and for those who were here last year will see about forty new clubs and bars in the city centre - as Nairobians have started to hang out there again.

All the usual people who can read things coming: the big travel agents, the tourist board - as of today, are expecting the biggest tourist season in twenty years. Hotels are fully booked, and there have been no cancellations. Kenya is safer than it has been in a long, long time: policing is more professional than it has been for many years. As some of you may know there are huge foreign investments on the coast (this is why we are running away to Lamu) - and all these are always sensitive to this sort of thing.. So far, they see this December as being a good year. My Lamu contacts tell me the usual jetset people with homes here have already booked their tickets - including Princess of Monaco and her family.

We have a wide range of events - and writers and editors coming in from Dakar, Bombay, Dehli, Cape Town, Addis Ababa, London, Paris, Lubumbashi, Nigeria, Johannesburg and the US. We have twoaward winning performance poets coming; one of Africa's leading DJ's and editors.

It is going to be a blast.

Look forward to seeing you here this December.

Best Wishes to you all,

Binyavanga

10/16/06 - The 2006 SLS-Kenya Contest Results Are In!

And we are very happy to congratulate the following winners:

Fiction

1^st Place: “Unslung” by Henk Rossouw
2^nd Place: “Troubled Waters” by A. Naomi Jackson
3^rd Place: “Mr. Peabody” by Kerry Hudson

Poetry

1st Place: "Oppenheimer Maps His Coordinates", "Oppenheimer on the Couch", and "Oppenheimer Finds a Lover or at the Store" by Cynthia Lowen
2nd Place: "My Shoes", "Mississippi Love Poem" and "Above your open mouth, me" by Chelsea Lemon Fetzer
3rd Place: "The Language of Breaking" by Addie Tsai

Nonfiction

1^st Place: “Quartzsite (Foreign Parts)” by Alisa Slaughter
2^nd Place: “Lapsed” by Amy Klein
3^rd Place: “Muscle Memory” by Erinn Batykefer

Thanks to all of you who entered, and please click here for more details.