Biyi Bandele, Mona Eltahawy, Noo Saro-Wiwa, and Sisonke Msimang are the Bellagio Residency Scholars 2018.
The Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency Program offers academics, artists, thought leaders, policymakers, and practitioners a serene setting conducive to focused, goal-oriented work, and the unparalleled opportunity to establish new connections with fellow residents from a wide array of backgrounds, disciplines, and geographies. Some of the leading artists that we know who have taken part in this program recently are Lauren Beukes, Victor Ehikhamenor, and Tsitsi Dangarembga.
The Bellagio Africa program, coordinated by the South Africa based Africa Centre, announced the artists who made it through the shortlist and are the new scholars. They are;
- Biyi Bandele | Multidisciplinary | Nigeria – Bandele is a UK-based Nigerian writer for fiction, theatre, journalism, television, film and radio.
- Mona Eltahawy | Literature | Egypt – Eltahawy has written essays and op-eds for publications worldwide on Egypt and the Islamic world, including women’s issues and Muslim political and social affairs. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, and the Miami Herald among others. Headscarves and Hymens, Eltahawy’s first book, was published in May 2015.
- Noo Saro-Wiwa | Literature | Nigeria – is the author of Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria (2012). The book was nominated for the Dolman Best Travel Book Award, named the Sunday Times Travel Book of the Year in 2012, selected as BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week in 2012, and nominated by the Financial Times as one of the best travel books of 2012. The Guardian newspaper also included it among its 10 Best Contemporary Books on Africa in 2012. It has been translated into French and Italian. In 2016 it won the Albatros Travel Literature Prize in Italy.
- Sisonke Msimang | Literature | South Africa – Msimang is a writer whose work is focussed on race, gender and democracy. She has written for a range of international publications including the New York Times, the Guardian, Newsweek and Al Jazeera. Her first book, Always Another Country: a memoir of exile and home, was published in South Africa in October 2017 and is in the running for her country’s Sunday Times Literary Prize 2018.
