Sunday Salon Nairobi

A Prose & Poetry Series with

Nadifa Mohamed
Adam Foulds
Malika Ndlovu
Thabiso Mohare
Billy Kahora
Abdul Adan

Six Readings & Performances
Six unique voices
In a tranquil outdoor setting

3pm-9pm
Sunday 23rd June
The Elephant (formerly Kifaru Gardens)
FREE ENTRY

ABOUT THE WRITERS & POETS

NADIFA MOHAMED
Nadifa Mohamed was born in Hargeisa (now Somaliland) in 1981 and moved as a child to England in 1986, staying permanently when war broke out in Somalia. She was educated in London and went to Oxford to study history and politics and she finally returned to Hargeisa in 2008. She lives in London and her first novel, Black Mamba Boy, based on her father’s memories of his travels in the 1930s, was published in 2010. It was longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Dylan Thomas Prize and shortlisted for the John Llewellyn-Rhys Memorial Prize and the Guardian First Book Award. It won the 2010 Betty Trask Prize. Her second novel will be published 15 August 2013

Read her story, Filsan, published in Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists 4, here (See PDF)

ADAM FOULDS
Adam Foulds was born and raised in London. He studied English at St Catharine’s College, Oxford, and was awarded an MA from the University of East Anglia, where he studied Creative Writing. He has had poetry published in various magazines, including Quadrant and Stand. He received the Harper-Wood Fellowship from St John’s College, Cambridge.His first novel, The Truth About These Strange Times (2007), is about the relationship between Howard, a Scottish loner, and 10-year-old maths prodigy, Saul. It won the 2008 Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award and a 2007 Betty Trask Award. This was followed by the long narrative poem, The Broken Word (2008), about Kenya’s Mau Mau uprising in the 1950s, seen through the eyes of an English schoolboy. It was shortlisted for the 2008 John Llewellyn-Rhys Memorial Prize and the 2009 Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, and won a Somerset Maugham Award and the 2008 Costa Poetry Award.His second novel is The Quickening Maze (2009), a part-historical part-fictional account of the relationship between John Clare, Matthew Allan – the head of Clare’s mental asylum, and Alfred Lord Tennyson. It was shortlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. Adam Foulds lives in London. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2010.

Read Adam’s story, published in Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists 4, here (See PDF)

MALIKA NDLOVU
Malika is an internationally published South African poet, playwright, performer and arts project manager. With a Degree in Performing Arts (1993) and Diplomas in Arts Administration (1995) and Advanced Theatre Research (1999-2000), she has wide range of experience in the Arts and Arts Management arena. Between 2007 and 2010 she was project manager for the Africa Centre’s Badilisha Poetry X-Change an international poetry festival. She is currently guest curator and presenter for BadilishaPoetry.com, a unique African poetry podcasting platform. Malika was a founder-member of Cape Town-based women writers’ collective WEAVE, co-editor of their multi-genre anthology Ink @ Boiling Point: A selection of 21st Century Black Women’s writing from the Southern Tip of Africa (2000). In 2004 she initiated the And The Word Was Woman Ensemble of female performance poets and later that year joined The Mothertongue Project, a collective of performing artists, writers and visual artists. Her poetry publications include Born in Africa But (1999) Womb to World: A Labour of Love (2001), Truth is both Spirit and Flesh (2008), a poetic memoir entitled Invisible Earthquake: a Woman’s Journal through Stillbirth (2009) and two published plays A Coloured Place (1998) and Sister Breyani (2010). As an independent artist and in collaboration with artists of various disciplines, Malika offers professional creative facilitation and produces multi-media, site-specific works diverse under the company banner ART on SITE dedicated to “healing through creativity.”
www.malika.co.za

BILLY KAHORA
Billy Kahora is the Managing Editor of Kwani? He also writes fiction and completed an MS.c in Creative Writing with distinction at the University of Edinburgh as a Chevening Scholar in 2007. Before that Billy studied and worked in South Africa for 8 years and in between worked as an Editorial Assistant for All Africa.com in Washington D.C. He has a Bachelor of Journalism degree and post-graduate diploma in Media Studies from Rhodes University. His short story, ‘Urban Zoning’ was shortlisted for the 2012 Caine Prize. He edited ‘Kenya Burning’, a visual narrative of the Kenya post-elections crisis published by the GoDown Arts Centre and Kwani Trust in March 2009. His extended feature, ‘The True Story of David Munyakei’ on Kenya’s biggest whistleblower has been developed into a non-fiction novella and released by Kwani Trust in July 2009. Billy was a Regional judge for the 2009 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and has worked on films including Soul Boy and Nairobi Half Life.

ABDUL ADAN
Abdul Adan was born in Somalia and grew up in Kenya, where he learnt English, Swahili, and Arabic. He has contributed fiction to African-writing, StoryTime, Jungle Jim, Arab World Books, and most recently SCARF. He lives in the US and studies literature at Washington University in St. Louis. His short story xxx was published in Kwani? 07