Kakanda selected for Iowa Writers’ programme

Nigerian writer, poet and columnist, Gimba Kakanda has made the list of writers to attend the International Writing Program (IWP), Fall Residency.  Kakanda was chosen among a list of over twenty writers, which also includes Hajar Bali, a poet playwright and fiction writer from Algeria, and Panashe Chigumadzi, a novelist and essayist from South Africa. […]

Nigerian writer, poet and columnist, Gimba Kakanda has made the list of writers to attend the International Writing Program (IWP), Fall Residency. 

Kakanda was chosen among a list of over twenty writers, which also includes Hajar Bali, a poet playwright and fiction writer from Algeria, and Panashe Chigumadzi, a novelist and essayist from South Africa.  

The Residency, which runs from runs from late August to mid-November, is designed for established and emerging creative writers – poets, fiction writers, dramatists, and non-fiction writers. The minimum requirements are that they have published at least one book, and that they possess sufficient proficiency in English to profit from the Iowa experience.

The U.S. Department of State is a major source of support for the program. The IWP also administers the grants of writers who come to the University of Iowa under subsidy from cultural organizations both in the U.S. and abroad.

Kakanda published a first volume of poetry, ‘Safari Pants’, in 2010. He is an editor at the Daily Nigerian, a daily committed to promoting transparency in governance, and maintains a weekly column in other periodicals concerned with social issues. He participates courtesy of the U.S. Embassy in Abuja.