Juliane Okot Bitek, Liu Scholar Alumna, UBC PhD Candidate and Canadian poet who was born in Kenya to Ugandan parents, has been named the winner of the African Poetry Book Fund’s 2017 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry for her collection 100 Days (University of Alberta Press, 2016). Okot Bitek will receive $1,000 USD.
Of Okot Bitek’s winning book, judge John Keene writes, “In 100 Days, poet Juliane Okot Bitek set out to memorialize the tragedy of the Rwandan genocide, but the witnessing force of these brief, incantatory poems ripples outward to figuratively encompass multiple histories of violence and brutality, including the terror her own family and countless others faced under Idi Amin’s regime in Uganda. The lyric beauty, intertextual depth, and metonymic power of Okot Bitek’s poetry underscores the capacities of of art and language to cast light into the darkest corners of our human experience, and bridge the gulfs that lie between us.”
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Okot Bitek’s work has been published widely online and in print in magazines including The Capilano Review, Arc, Whetstone, Fugue, and Room of One’s Own, and has been anthologized in Great Black North: Contemporary African Canadian Poetry and Revolving City: 51 Poems and the Stories Behind Them.
Visit julianeokotbitek.com for more on her work. Copies of 100 Days may be purchased online from the UBC Bookstore, the University of Alberta Press, an Indie Bookstore, or on Amazon.
Learn more in this African Poetry Book Fund article.
