Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine, has served as ICWT Director since 2002.

Above: Ngugi in Seoul

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
December 2008

COMING UP ON 2009, the ICWT is looking forward in the spring to the second event in its collaboration with the Program in African American Studies. The Black Writers Series will host poet Claudia Rankine who will be reading her work on May 5, 2009. The author of four collections of poetry, her latest book is Don't Let Me Be Lonely – an experimental multi-genre project that blends poetry, essays, and image and explores a “fragmented selfhood in contemporary America.” We are thrilled to see the series continue and to be able to feature a local poet with Rankine, who is also Professor of English at Pomona College. This series, and the partnership with African American Studies, as a model, is representative of other  projects that the ICWT is exploring right now. We are looking to develop a possible translator’s series – beginning with those translators already working and teaching at UCI – in partnership with departments that focus on translation in various ways. This series would both highlight the mission of the ICWT and also allow us to be available to students and faculty as well as to the community of which we feel we are a part.

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MORE ON THE DIRECTOR

In October, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, along with Nigerian novelist Ben Okri and Angolan writer Ondjaki, won The Grinzane Prize for Africa, established with "the intent to celebrate every year established African writers worldwide and to report young authors who are facing the
international scene, making possible the publication of their work translated into Italian."
Click here for more details

Ngugi's Wizard of the Crow is now available
in Finnish and Spanish translations