Shailja Patel

CNN calls Shailja Patel “the people-centered face of globalization”. An internationally acclaimed Kenyan poet, playwright, activist, and public intellectual, her performances have received standing ovations on four continents. Trained as a political economist, accountant and yoga teacher, she uses text, voice, body, and critical thinking to delve for truth and dissect power. Patel has been African Guest Writer at Sweden’s Nordic Africa Institute and poet-in-residence at the Tallberg Forum, Sweden’s alternative to Davos. She has appeared on the BBC World Service, NPR and Al-Jazeera, and her political essays appear in Le Monde Diplomatique and The New Inquiry, among others. Her work has been translated into 16 languages, and appears in No Serenity Here, the groundbreaking multilingual Chinese–African poetry anthology. Honors include a Sundance Theatre Fellowship, a Creation Fund Award from the National Performance Network, the Fanny-Ann Eddy Poetry Award from IRN-Africa, the Voices of Our Nations Poetry Award, a Lambda Slam Championship, and the Outwrite Poetry Prize. Patel is a founding member of Kenyans For Peace, Truth and Justice, a civil society coalition which works for an equitable democracy in Kenya. In 2012, she was Kenya’s poet for Poetry Parnassus, in the London Cultural Olympiad. Migritude has been published in Italy and Sweden, and was was shortlisted for the prestigious Camaiore Poetry Prize in Italy.