Experiences

Who are SLS Students? SLS students range in age from undergraduates in college to senior citizens—and every age in between. There is no university affiliation necessary, only the desire for a once-in-a-lifetime literary experience. The following are statements made by former students and faculty to give you a sense of the program, in their own words. While we at SLS may have encouraged them to send something, we did not edit what they wrote (well, maybe only minutely, for space and the faint of heart) nor did we direct them what to say.

2006

This is my second time at this program, but it has not ceased to amaze me.  The energy of the Kenyan and other African writers meets the enthusiasm of the American participants and the experience of the diverse faculty to create something new, alive and vital.  These two weeks have been filled with the invaluable exchange of literary ideas, dreams and plans among writers in workshop and over breakfast, dinner and drinks, giving us a needed respite from the isolating work of writing, and a real sense of community across continents.  Among everything else, we listened to faculty readings on the lawn of the US Embassy’s Cultural Attaché’s house; attended public lectures at the University of Nairobi; got hands-on publishing tips by the founders of Tin House on a sunlit rooftop in Lamu, muzzuen wailing faintly in the background; listened to participants’ reading new work on another Lamu rooftop, a gorgoeus blue night sky and the sound of a lapping ocean as background, and much more.  Lamu has been my idea of heaven: writing, swimming on almost deserted beaches, eating my fill of Swahili cuisine, then talking into the wee hours with like-minded literary fun and smart people.  I leave here re-charged, having re-affirmed my literary ambitions, and grown in my appreciation of the written word, the richness of culture from which words spring, and the value of community.  I must return for a re-fill next year.
- Doreen Baingana (Uganda/US) SLS-2005/2006 Faculty

I want to tell you how happy I was to have been part of this event.  As a writer, the workshop was invaluable because of the chance to deepen my understanding of the characters in my novel, which takes place in West Africa.  So the conference, for me, had great practical value.  I received immensely valuable feedback from M.G. Vassanji and from all the students, the sort of insight and cultural context for my work that I could never have gotten in the U.S. 
But I also felt part of something larger.  Globalization has so many negative aspects, things we confront every day whether we live in New York or Nairobi (or Kansas or Lamu).  The SLS program provides a counterweight, and I think in the most effective way possible.  I was listening to a Bill Moyers speech on the radio yesterday, and I was struck, not for the first time, by the urgency of his message, a message I've also tried to convey in my work.   I have long believed that we undervalue the effect of art on politics, particularly in America (and I'm including journalism in the loose category of art).   The bad guys will always have the numbers: the money, the organization.  What the good guys have is soul.  I think the program succeeds not only as a writing conference but also as a way of creating a loose confederation of voices that aren't going to be found in Thomas Friedman's next earth-is-flat tome, and I found it quite moving to be part of that.  - Susan Zakin SLS-Kenya 2006

When people ask me how my trip was, I say: perfect, astonishing, magical, frustrating (in appropriately challenging ways for that kind of travel), educational most of all. I tend to work alone, so it was fantastic for me to be around a group of creative folks. I left with a clear sense of how to revise two essays and I am working on a third new one now. My workshop was productive, engaged, communal, effective. Love Arthur and the other faculty I had a chance to work with and will certainly keep in touch. Lamu and Nairobi were a perfect complement to each other, and for my writing spectrum, and I would never have known those places (both literally and otherwise) if it weren't for SLS.
- Lauri Mattenson SLS-Kenya 2006

The Summer Literary Seminars came at an opportune time for me – end of a rather long writing year when my writing energy was floundering, but mixing at the seminar with other writers from all over the world who are determined about their spiritual calling, hearing them talk about their work, hearing them critique, has snapped me back into life again and I am tearing away on my novel project like a cat with its tail on fire – and not doubting my sanity…
- Christopher Mlalazi (Zimbabwe) SLS-Kenya 2006

Please check out Matthew Cheney’s (SLS-Kenya 2006) blog which discusses in great detail many of his experiences in Kenya http://mumpsimus.blogspot.com/

I thought the trip was wonderful.  I loved Lamu, and my workshop (nonfiction) was the best I've ever been in: quality of teacher, talent and critical abilities of participants, general goodwill of our group. It was very important to me that the African writers were there, too, and I liked having some editor types around.
- Lauren B. Smith SLS-Kenya 2006

This is the infrared shot I would have taken: ten writers asprawl under the stars on the deck of a dhow afloat on the Indian Ocean, faces lit by cellphone glow as they each waited for a single bar of power to text the night away. I haven’t mentioned the salt air, the bow lapped by waves, the creaking hull, the dark and hot of all those breathing bodies, and of course overhead the sickled moon-with-cradled-star—all that romance. I leave it to you to imagine the romantic coming smack up against the modern writer at work, white and black, even in the dark night of the Kenyan waters.
      But instead of being on that boat (too many options), I was reading my poetry on the island of Lamu, in its fort’s courtyard at dusk, with swallows and bats diving in platoons across the dusky square of blue, with the power on and off, and a twelve course feast groaning on tables set up beside the albino drummer and his two friends so professionally beating the night away as soon as the last word of the night’s offering of African and American readers had faded. I didn’t  miss the boat—I was in Africa again at last, after thirty years, and everything about it—the light, the handshakes, the passion, everything that dear Binyavanga says I can’t write about in his infamous Granta article—summoned my humility toward the continent’s magnificence all over again. Having the opportunity to share my enthusiasm with better company than I had on my first trip (see Cannibal, NYU Press) was true revenge. And, finally, teaching both African and U.S. students about the glories of both African and U.S. writing was thrilling.
- Terese Svoboda SLS-Kenya 2006 Faculty

The Heron Hotel: Stiff necked writers, editors and librarians concealing their huge breakfasts with manuscripts, note pads and journals. Hmph! Timid students milling around the Tin House editor, Farafina Magazine editor, Sable litmag editor and Kwani? editor wondering if their works had hopes of existing off their worn out looking manuscripts into the above mentioned finer established magazines. An orderly disorderliness marked the routine at the Heron Hotel. Meals, workshops, meals, bus trips, payments, checking in and checking out, busy lobby, intellectual interaction. In the dining area, the literary fanatics would ogle the damsels from other continents wondering if they should ask if she could share her manuscript with them or share her body with them. Biding their time, they waited and waited and waited…
Lamu: Human beings are incapable of such equanimity. The wonders lay in the sand. Numerous. Each grain a potion to feed the egos of lustful tourists, idlers and children. The winders lie within the Muslim prayers echoing with comic earnestness. I was hypnotised. I was enchanted. I walked into Lamu at night blindfolded as the beach boys led me through the alleys whose stone walls veiled the secrets of the coastal girls. I held on. Trusting. Running. The blindfolds came off and danced before my eyes tempting me to dance with them. Standing in the ocean, the fluorescent algae swam around me daring me to join them in their aquatic frenzy. I plunged in washing away my urban burdens. Time, urgency and promptness are but luxuries in Lamu. With extended breakfasts, exaggerated desires to swim and sluggish exits from the hotels, Lamu is an island that detaches itself from international dialogue, reason and common sense which is why it is the most imperfect place for writers who need to exist in a real world. In Lamu, the best way to engage with the Island is to talk and watch. Talk to the island folk, talk to the squeaky voiced henna artists, talk to the red skinned tourists, talk to the orange and black haired beach boys, talk to the ocean, talk to the donkeys.. and when the conversations end…(which they never do) go back to your hole called home and write. I am wary of writers who go to far away islands to write. They are just show offs who are suffering from identity crisis and so need to pollute an island with ink from pens that never dry.
- Beverley Nambozo (Uganda) SLS-Kenya 2006

As the weeks go on here, I predict participants will realize that their experiences have invaded their psyches in durable, interesting and useful ways mitigated most of all (with no close seconds...) by their own capacity for being open to a radically different array of stimuli beaming in thru their senses from all directions...
- Ed Pavlic SLS-Kenya 2006 Faculty

Ce Festival qui a accordé droit de cité aux écrivains venus de divers pays.( Etats-Unis, Ouganda, Nigeria, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Afrique du Sud...) m'a permit d'ajouter un plus à mon bagage littéraire...
Je suis satisfait du fait que les ateliers d'écriture m'ont permit de croiser ma vision du monde avec celle d'autres écrivains...
Je me prepare pour les cours d'anglais afin de pouvoir prochaine-
ment discuter et partager correctement avec les autres participants… merci pour tout.
- Fiston Mwanza (Congo)  SLS-Kenya 2006

I paged through the writing book I brought to Kenya again this morning. Between the novel notes and the scribbles of poems are so many names and addresses.  Of course in the sweat of Nairobi’s city busses, or with our fingers sticky from the shark oil of a dhow, or because we were still dancing in the sand out past where the music played- what we exchanged in each other’s little writing books was often hardly legible.  Proper names written at a hopeless slant, reinvented letters, post numbers, Uganda, Congo, Nigeria, S. Africa, Kenya, Kenya, Kenya. You are the best thing that ever happened to the pages of my stories and poems.

-Chelsea Lemon Fetzer SLS-Kenya 2006

2005

"As an aspiring fiction writer who had never attended a writing class or literary seminar, I wasn't sure what to expect from SLS-Kenya. What I got went far beyond just a few tips on how to make my stories better. The coopoeration with Kwani? led to fruitful interaction with a host of fascinating writers, journalists, musicians and others. After just three days, I was already convinced that my time, energy and funds had been well spent. It wasn't just writing I was learning about but about Kenya and its culture, seen from the inside. It was one of the most exciting and memorable experiences I've had." (Pat Brett SLS-Kenya 2005)

2004

"I thought the trip was FASCINATING on every level--the diversity of the participants, the level of the literature and commitment of Kwani, the exoticness of East Africa, Karen Blixen discussions, elephants strolling by the swimming pool, the backroom bartering expereince, instant celebrity status at the snack shop because I was wearing a Kwani t-shirt and knew the Ukoo Flani Mau Mau, trading my Mariners baseball cap for a carved lion and feeling the need to yell out of the bus, "The Mariners are going to win the World Series" as we drove away..." (Sharon Yamanaka SLS-Kenya 2004)

“Maasai Mara was extraordinary and remains fresh in my memory - the times we had to shoulder the van out of mud while lions roamed the nearby hillside; lean warriors clad in red danced straight and tall, their beads in rythmic unison; best of all, sleeping in a tent earshot away from the cricket-thick bush. I have been inspired to write of my stay there as well as the Muslim island, Lamu, where I ate baracuda, lounged on a rooftop under the moon, was painted in henna by local women, and photographed the market place, children riding bareback on donkies, and intricate handcarved doors. I plan to return! ” (Eugenie Theall SLS-Kenya 2004)

"My experience with the SLS seminar in Nairobi was twofold. Living with Kenyans smoothed the course of my writing and thinking, in the same way that a powerful flood of new water sweeps a riverbed clean. Attending the seminar was like gouging a deep channel in the center of the riverbed. No language is the same after it's touched bedrock." (Laura Christine Johnson SLS-Kenya 2004)

If you were there and would like to submit some photos or share your experiences, please email them to Tom Burke or mail them to SLS-Kenya Snapshots PO BOX 16 Brooklyn, NY 11222. Check back for updates.