Summer Literary Seminars

Catherine Bush
Maxime Chernoff
Lynn Coady
Cornelius Eady
Billy Kahora
Ed Pavlic
Binyavanga Wainaina

Parselelo Kantai
Judy Kibinge
Tony Mochama
Tom Mboya
Boniface Mwangi
Wambui Mwangi
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

Fiction

Catherine Bush is the author of three novels. Claire’s Head (M&S, 2004), shortlisted for the Trillium Award, and chosen as a Best Book of the Year by the Globe and Mail. The Rules of Engagement (HarperCollins, 2000), a national bestseller, was published internationally, shortlisted for the City of Toronto Book Award, and chosen as a New York Times Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year by the LA Times and the Globe and Mail. Minus Time (HarperCollins,1993), her first novel, was also published in the U.S. and the U.K., and shortlisted for the SmithBooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the City of Toronto Book Award. Bush has a degree in Comparative Literature from Yale University, has taught Creative Writing at universities including Concordia, the University of Florida, and the Universty of Guelph. She is Director of the Creative Writing MFA at the University of Guelph, and is an adjunct professor in University of British Columbia’s on-line MFA programme. A native of Toronto, she has been Writer-in-Residence at McMaster University, the University of New Brunswick, the University of Alberta, and the University of Guelph. Her nonfiction has appeared in numerous publications including the Globe and Mail and The New York Times Magazine. She is working on a new novel

Lynn Coady grew up in Port Hawkesbury on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. She has since lived in Vancouver, Toronto, and Edmonton, where she currently resides. She holds a BA from Carleton University and an MFA from the University of British Columbia. Strange Heaven was her first novel earning her a landslide of critical acclaim and a nomination for the Governor General’s Award — and won the Dartmouth Book Award and the ABPA Booksellers' Choice Award. In 2005 she was awarded the Canada Council for the Arts' Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award for artists in mid-career.

Coady has since published two novels Saints of Big Harbour and Mean Boy as well as a short story collection called Play the Monster Blind. A new novel called Everything You Touch is presently in the works. Her ongoing sidelines include teaching and journalism. She has taught creative writing at Douglas College, Simon Fraser University's Writer's Studio, The Sage Hill Writing Experience, The Maritime Writer's Workshop, and the Banff Center for the Arts. Coady’s non-fiction essays and articles have appeared in Saturday Night, Chatelaine, Elle Canada, Canadian Geographic, Vancouver Magazine, The Globe and Mail, and Adbusters Magazine--where she worked as a senior writer and editor. These days she moonlights as an advice columnist for the Globe and Mail.

Mixed Genre

Maxine Chernoff is the author of six books of fiction and eleven books of poetry. Her most recent book of poems is The Turning (Apogee Press, 2008) and Some of her Friends that Year: New and Selected Stories (Coffee House Press, 2002), a Northern California Book Award finalist. Her previous book of stories, Signs of Devotion (Simon and Schuster), was a NYTBR Notable Book of 1993, as was her novel, American Heaven (Coffee House Press, 1996). Her translation with Paul Hoover of The Selected Poems of Friedrich Hoelderlin (Omnidawn Press, 2009), won the PEN USA Translation Award. An editor of the long-running literary journal, New American Writing, she is chair of Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. She has read and discussed her poetry and fiction in Russia (at SLS), China, Germany, England, Scotland, Belgium, Brazil, Australia, and the Czech Republic.

Poetry

Cornelius Eady is co-founder with Toi Derricotte, of the Cave Canem workshop. His latest book of poetry is HARDHEADED WEATHER (Marian Wood/Putnam). Presently, he is Associate Professor of.English at the University of Notre Dame. In Sept, 2010 he joins the faculty at the University of Missouri-Columbia as Professor of English and the Miller Family Endowed Chair in Literature and Writing.

Writing Kenya Directors

Billy Kahora is Editor of Kwani?, Kenya’s foremost creative arts journal. He also writes fiction and recently completed an MS.c in Creative Writing with distinction at the University of Edinburgh as a Chevening Scholar in 2007.

He is currently working on a novel based on his short story, ‘The Applications’ published in Kwani? 3. His extended feature, ‘The True Story of David Munyakei’ on Kenya’s biggest whistleblower has been developed into a non-fiction novella and is set for release by Kwani? in June 2009.

He has been published in Vanity Fair, Mail and Guardian and the East African Standard and was highly commended for his short story, ‘Treadmill Love’ by the 2007 Caine Prize judges. He has recently edited, ‘Kenya Burning’, a visual narrative of the Kenya post-elections crisis published by the Go Down Arts Centre and Kwani to be published by the end of February 2009. He was also a co-judge for the Commonwealth Writers Africa Region in 2008.

Billy studied and worked in South Africa for 8 years and in between worked as an editorial assistant for one of the largest African news sites, All Africa.com in Washington D.C. He also has a Bachelor of Journalism degree and post-graduate diploma in Media Studies from Rhodes University South Africa.

Ed Pavlic's most recent books are Winners Have Yet to be Announced: A Song for Donny Hathaway (UGA P, 2008) and Labors Lost Left Unfinished (UPNE, 2006). His other books are Paraph of Bone & Other Kinds of Blue (Copper Canyon P, 2001) and Crossroads Modernism (U Minn P, 2002). His prizes include the Darwin Turner Award from African American Review and The American Poetry Review / Honickman First Book Prize. He has had fellowships at the Vermont Studio Center, The Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and The MacDowell Colony and has taught poetry at Summer Literary Seminars in St. Petersburg, Russia and at the Kwani? Lit Fest in Nairobi and Lamu Town, Kenya. He lives with Stacey, Milan, Suncana, Mzée and I Am Pozzo in Athens, Georgia.

Writer in Residence

Binyavanga Wainaina is a Kenyan author, journalist and winner of the 2002 Caine Prize for African Writing. He is the founding editor of Kwani?, a leading African literary magazine based in Kenya. He has written for The EastAfrican, National Geographic, The Sunday Times (South Africa), Granta, the New York Times and The Guardian (UK). Wainaina has taught at Union College and Williams College, and is currently the Director of the Chinua Achebe Center for African Literature and Languages at Bard College.

Guests, Lecturers and Panelists

Parselelo Kantai is is one of Africa's leading investigative journalists; an intellectual of commitment and talent - and a fiction writer. He has had a Reuters Fellowship for his nonfiction and was shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing. He is presently completing an MFA in Creative writng from the University of London. He contributes to the Financial Times.

Judy Kibinge was born in Nairobi in 1967. Her family left for Washington DC in the USA in 1969, where they lived for the next five years. When she was seven, she won a major children’s writing competition in the USA. She studied at Kenya High School and Malvern Girls College in the UK, after which she proceeded to Art College in Birmingham, then Art College at Manchester Polytechnic where she graduated in Design for Communication Media. She worked at McCann Ericsson Kenya for eight years, three and a half of which were as Creative Director–the first black Creative Director in Kenya. She has been personally responsible for many award winning adverts. She quit McCann in October 1999 to pursue a career in film. In three years alone she produced numerous corporate documentaries, shot across the continent for Monsato, IPPF, Technoserve and others. She has also written the screenplay for and directed a short film for MNET entitled The Aftermath. Her film, Dangerous Affair, won the overall prize at the Zanzibar Film Festival in 2003. She has recently started a Multimedia Hotshop company called Seven. Judy is a member of Concerned Kenyan Writers, a coalition whose purpose is to use our writing skills to help save Kenya in this polarised time.

Tony ‘smitta’ Mochama is a poet and journalist who lives and works in Nairobi. A Law graduate, Tony is also a vodka connoisseur, gossip columnist extraordinaire, and has a collection of short stories coming out soon titled – ‘The ruins down in Africa’. He has also been called a ‘literary gangster’, from time to rhyme. His collection of poetry, ‘What if I am a literary gangster?’ was published by Brown Bear Insignia in 2007.

Tom Mboya bio coming soon

Boniface Mwangi is an award-winning photojournalist based in Kenya. He joined The Standard newspaper in 2005 as a Correspondent Photojournalist. His work has been published in a number of international publications including: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Sunday Times, International Herald Tribune and BBC Focus in Africa Magazine. He won the Mohamed Amin Photographic Award category in CNN MultiChoice African Journalist Awards 2008. Boniface Mwangi's images have been used in newspapers all over the world. Mwangi is a graduate of The East African School of Journalism.

Wambui Mwangi was born in Nairobi and currently lives in Nairobi and Toronto. She attended Loreto Convent Valley Road and St. Mary’s School, Nairobi before graduating from Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts. She has post-graduate degrees from McGill University, Montreal, and the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. She has taught at Vassar College, New York and the University of Toronto. She has a passion for post-colonial theory and Kenyan political history. Her scholarly work, fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry and photography have been published in various journals worldwide. She is the Director of GenerationKenya and a member of Concerned Kenyan Writers.

Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor is the 2003 winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing with her story Weight of Whispers from the Kwanini series. She was for some time the Executive Director of the Zanzibar International Film Festival, where she organised a Literary Forum in 2004, attended by Baroness Nicholson.

Yvonne was named ‘Woman of the Year’ by Eve Magazine in Kenya in 2004. She is now looking to increase the amount of time she can devote to writing.