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Creative Conversations: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

Thursday 29 October 2020  6.30 p.m. – 7.30 p.m.

Zoom Event – You will receive link after you  Register on EventBrite

“A tremendous writer… It’s hard to doubt the power of the written word when you hear the story of Ngugi wa Thiong’o” – The Guardian

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o is an urgent and vital writer, whose work encompasses fiction, memoir, theatre, criticism and writing for children. He is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the university of California, Irvine, and is director of the university’s International Centre for Writing and Translation.

His novels include Weep Not, Child (1964), The River Between (1965), A Grain of Wheat (1967), Petals of Blood (1980), Devil on the Cross(1980), Matigari (1986)and Wizard of the Crow (2006).

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o is also a radical and original writer for performance. In the 1970s, he developed a radical form of theatre that sought to liberate and demystify the theatrical process by involving the audience in the production of the works. His plays include The Black Hermit (1963), The Trial of Dedan Kimathi (1976) with Micere Githae Mugo and I will marry when I want with Ngugi wa Mirii (1977).

In 1977, due to the politics of his work, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o was imprisoned by the Kenyan government in the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison. During his icarceration, he wrote Devil on the Cross.

His social and literary criticism includes such landmark works as Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986), Moving the Centre: The Struggle for Cultural Freedom (1993), Penpoints, Gunpoints and Dreams: The Performance of Literature and Power in Post-Colonial Africa (1998).

His numerous awards and prizes include: 1973: Lotus Prize for Literature, 2001: Nonino International Prize for Literature, 2009: Shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, 2012: National Book Critics Circle Award (finalist Autobiography) for In the House of the Interpreter, 2014: Nicolás Guillén Lifetime Achievement Award for Philosophical Literature, 2016: Park Kyong-ni Prize, 2018: Grand Prix des mécènes of the GPLA 2018, for the significance of his entire body of work.

Creative Conversations is programmed by the University of Glasgow Creative Writing Programme and funded by the Ferguson Bequest. Professor Thomas Ferguson (1900-1977), Henry Mechan Chair of Public Health (1944-64), bequeathed his estate to the University, with the instruction that the money should be used to foster the social side of University life.

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