Experience a literary journey like no other...
The emphasis of SLS Kenya, an entirely one-of-a-kind annual event, is on cultural immersion as an indelible part of literary and, indeed, broader creative process.
About the Program | About the Directors | Costs | Application | Guests and Lecturers
About the Program
Kenya Between The Lines is built on the highly positive response to the self-contained, non-workshop-based, "Writing Kenya" 2009 program component. For 2010 it was expanded and deepened under its new name.
The program will run in parallel with the main program of genre workshops and will be conducted on a full-time, five-days-a-week schedule. Co-directed and organized by Billy Kahora, one of Kenya's leading young writers and journalists (and the Managing Editor of our partner organization, Kwani? Trust and Literary Journal who successfully directed "Writing Kenya" last year) and the SLS Kenya permanent faculty member, the great writer and poet Ed Pavlic, this independent "program within the program" will present a wide array of lectures, talks, interviews, round-table discussions, tours, and performances by some of Kenya's most interesting writers, poets, scholars, journalists, artists, photographers, and musicians of the new generation. In effect, it will offer participants a unique opportunity to see the country, and indeed all of East Africa, through the eyes of their peers living and working in Kenya.
This years guests and lecturers will include Judy Kibinge, Wambui Mwangi, Yvonne Odhiambo Owuor, Parselelo Kantai, Boniface Mwangi, Tony Mochama and Tom Mboya among many, many others.
Here's a taste of what to expect this December 2010:
The Kenya Between The Lines Writing Sessions
Kenya Between The Lines captures contemporary Kenyan artistic and cultural experience through writers, filmmakers, cartoonists, photographers, poets and spoken-word performers. Kenya Between The Lines offers both breadth and depth, a whistle-stop tour of what Kenya has to offer in literature, arts and culture.
Writers and Kenya Between The Lines
Introducing Kenya Between The Lines – Tom Odhiambo
Reporting and Researching Kenya – David Kaiza/‘Running’ Kenya – Jackie Lebo
Fictionalizing Kenya – Binyavanga Wainaina
Teaching Kenya – Dr Wambui Mwangi
Publishing Kenya – Billy Kahora, Kwani Trust
New Art and Kenya Between The Lines
Painting Kenya – The Go-down Artists/ Drawing Kenya – Patrick Gathara
Filming Kenya – Seven Productions, Judy Kibinge/Photographing Kenya – Boniface Mwangi and others, Picha Mtaani
Rapping/Performing Kenya – Ngwatilo Neema, Tony Mochama and Buddha Blaze
Lamu
History In The Present – Museum Lecture
Contemporary Culture - Boat Building In Lamu
Below is a sampling of some of the lectures that occured during 2009 Writing Kenya program:
Contemporary Kenya and the World through Literature and the Arts: Photography, cartoons, Film and Popular Media in Contemporary Kenya - Panel Discussion with Patrick Gathara, Boniface Mwangi, Judy Kibinge and Tony Mochama
Contemporary Film in Kenya with Judy Kibinge
Contemporary Poetry Spaces/Histories in Kenya/ Hip Hop and Performance Space in Kenya with Neema Mawiyoo, Blaze and Tony Mochama
Creative Non-Fiction: Travel and Spaces in 'Other' Kenya with David Kaiza
Exploring Lamu Lecture with Billy Kahora (lecture while traveling by dhow sailboat to visit another part of Lamu island)
Writing Lamu Lecture with Ed Pavlic
Binyavanga Wainaina in conversation with Ed Pavlic
Kenya Between the Lines: An Inside Look
Almost 50 years since independence, Kenya continues to baffle those who have taken it upon themselves to deconstruct it as a space. During Kenya Between The Lines-2011, join Kenyan writers, artists, musicians and contemporary academics will present their version of Kenyan-ness, through their work.
During SLS Kenya 2009 and 2010, presentations by writers and artists covered issues of conflict brought on by the post elections violence following the 2007 elections. This continues to inform most literary, artistic and cultural work in Kenya today. However, the emergence of a new generation of writers, musicians and artists has started to produce new narratives that raise issues outside of established discourse. At a glimpse, these expressions and narratives place ‘Kenya’ firmly in the background and re-introduces, legitimizes and pushes into a mainstream place, multiple new post-conflict ‘Kenya’s.
Constantly questioning acquired wisdoms, these new narratives and expressions jostle for recognition. Kenya Between The Lines will go a step beyond by introducing audiences not only to these new writers, artists and musicians; it will also introduce the spaces in which they work to visiting audiences to create a more in-depth, intensive experience of Kenya Between The Lines.
Not long ago, the contemporary writer in Kenya was caught up in a double bind between an imposed official history and an un-texted present in constant flux; the bind further creates a state of split mentality, an unceasing search for identity. This was both a boon and a curse, even though material was never scarce, as the writer sought the forms that would allow him to manage what was at hand.
Historical narratives that remained unsolved made the writer’s project even harder still, since they tended to blend effortlessly with the contemporary urban legend and ongoing rural folktales; thus, the writer’s interest in what was around him was mired in contexts past. The language he encountered also reflected this double bind. Official versions of English and Kiswahili were subverted by vernacular and a mix of all in every one of his other relationships and transactions.
In this mix of dictions, he observed and imbibed a sense of oral storytelling -- first at home, where narratives are constantly told in informal yet highly ritualized ways. This paradigm extended into his neighborhood, and many of the public spaces he observed and inhabits -- the matatu, the church and, when he gets older, the bar. Prevalent mode of behavior in all these spaces is, simultaneously, informal and highly ritualized. Parallel to this is the school system, the university – the formal spaces that impose language, codes of behavior, and in this way “formed” him or her. Welcome to the ‘official’ Kenya...
That was then.
It is these issues, among a myriad others, that the contemporary Kenyan writer constantly grappled with. There were no short cuts, few texted narratives and sources that a walk to the library could fix – and so he made sense of his history even before he entered the present. He looked at the things that said most about the people around him and his space in the world through corruption and conflict, because of their influence on his space and his life. And he tried to find a language to do this. He had little option when it came to form because he somehow, along the way, decided to become a writer.”
But then he had dawdled for too long – things were been decided for him. Many of the issues that he sensed beneath the surface came to the fore in 2007/2008 -- not through his pen but through the panga and the bow and arrow. So now, increasingly, it seems to me, at least after the post-elections, that the writer in Kenya has been forced to think all the above through, but also go a step further. While language, register and identity were key issues before, he has been firmly asked to immerse himself in issues of identity politics. Now, facility with language, dexterity with theory might not be quite enough – a significant understanding of many a different and Kenyan space that before could be conveniently shrugged aside or outmaneuvered through wily literary methods, is no longer do-able. It is no longer enough, it seems, to grapple with Kenyan-ness but with ethnic-ness and what that means in relation to the relative Other. And so new vistas and discoveries open up.
Program costs for the 2011 SLS Kenya Between the Lines Program are as follows:
The program fee for the full program (December 7 - 21) is USD $1111. The program fee covers full participation in the Kenya Between the Lines program. PLEASE NOTE: Participants are encouraged to participate in as many of the activities as possible, and are free to pick and choose. There is, however, no possibility of “partial enrollment” and the full fee must be paid for registration in the program, no matter how much of it is attended. Seminar sessions are open exclusively to registered participants.
Please note that the program fee does not include airfare, airport fees, or accommodations. Participants will receive complimentary transportation from the airport upon arrival.
For more information on program accommodation, visit the Housing & Facilities section of the site.
To view the application form, please click here.
