Speaker Biographies

To date, we have confirmed the participation of Nuruddin Farah, Alexandra Fuller, Binyavanga Wainaina, and Uwem Akpan.

Nuruddin Farah

Naruddin Farah was born in 1945 in Baidoa, in what is now the Republic of Somalia, and is considered one of the greatest contemporary writers in the world. The author of eight books, he has earned many awards, including the Premio Cavour in Italy, the Kurt Tucholsky Prize in Sweden, the Lettre Ulysses Award in Berlin, and the prestigious Neustadt International Prize in Literature. This prize, according to The New York Times, is "widely regarded as the most prestigious international literary award after the Nobel." Farah has been praised by other notable writers. South African novelist Nadine Gordimer described him as "one of the real interpreters of experience on our troubled continent," while Chinua Achebe observed that Farah "excels in giving voice to tragedy in remote places of the world that speak directly and familiarly out to our own hearts." Exiled from Somalia after the publication of his novel Sweet and Sour Milk, Farah began a lifelong literary pursuit: “to keep my country alive by writing about it.”

 

Alexandra Fuller

At the age of three, Alexandra Fuller and her family moved to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) during that country's bloody struggle for independence. Fuller’s experience of that war has informed all of her books. Fuller was educated in Zimbabwe until she was eighteen, first at a small government boarding school near the family’s farm in the country’s eastern mountains and then at a private, girls-only boarding school in Harare. Watching the celebratory atmosphere in the aftermath of independence gradually turn into the horror of Mugabe’s one-man attempt to take a country to the grave with him has also informed Fuller’s work. “Africa is a great teacher,” she has explained. “We’re not a good example of much, but we’re a terrible warning of power run amok and of the long, high price of oppression.” Fuller has written three books of nonfiction. Her debut book, Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood (Random House, 2001), was a New York Times Notable Book for 2002, the 2002 Booksense Best Non-fiction book, a finalist for the Guardian’s First Book Award, and the winner of the 2002 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize. Her 2004 Scribbling the Cat: Travels with an African Soldier (Penguin Press) won the Ulysses Prize for Art of Reportage. Her third book was The Legend of Colton H. Bryant(May 2008 by Penguin Press). Fuller is currently working on a book about her mother that is tentatively titled Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Unforgetfulness (2011), and which is a prequel/sequel to Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight.

Visit Alexandra Fuller's website.

 

Binyavanga Wainaina

Binyavanga Wainaina is a Kenyan author, journalist, and winner of the Caine Prize. Born in Nakuru in Rift Valley province, he attended Moi Primary School in Nakuru, Mangu High School in Thika, and Lenana School in Nairobi. He later studied commerce at the University of Transkei in South Africa, after which he worked in Cape Town for some years as a freelance food and travel writer. In July 2002 he won the Caine Prize for African Writing for his short story ”Discovering Home.” He is the founding editor of Kwani, the first literary magazine in East Africa since Transition Magazine. Since its founding, Kwanihas become an important source of new writing from Africa, with several writers having been nominated for, and having won, the Caine Prize subsequently. In 2003, Wainaina was given an award by the Kenya Publisher’s Association in recognition of his services to Kenyan literature. He has written for The EastAfrican, National Geographic, The Sunday Times (South Africa), Granta, The New York Times, and The Guardian (UK). He is presently a Writer-in-Residence at Union College in Schenectady, New York (USA), where he is teaching, lecturing, and working on a novel.

Visit Binyavanga Wainaina's website.

 

Uwem Akpan

In his own words: I was born under a palm-wine tree in Ikot Akpan Eda in Ikot Ekpene Diocese in Nigeria. I was inspired to write by the people who sit around my village church to share palm wine after Sunday Mass, by the Bible, and by the humor and endurance of the poor. My grandfather was one of those who brought the Catholic Church to our village. I was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 2003, and I like to celebrate the sacraments for my fellow villagers. Some of them have no problem stopping me in the road and asking for confession!

I have very fond memories of my childhood in my village, where everybody knows everybody, and all my paternal uncles still live together in one big compound. When I was growing up, my mother told me folktales and got me and my three brothers to read a lot. I became a fiction writer during my seminary days. I wrote at night, when the community computers were free. Computer viruses ate much of my work. Finally, my friend Wes Harris believed in me enough to get me a laptop. This saved me from the despair of losing my stories and made me begin to see God again in the seminary. The stories on that first laptop are the core of Say You're One of Them. I received my MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan in 2006. In 2007, I taught in Harare, Zimbabwe. Now I serve at Christ the King Church, Ilasamaja-Lagos, Nigeria.

Visit Uwen Akpan's website.