Otoniya Juliane Okot Bitek is the Ellen and Warren Tallman Writer in Residence 2020-2021 at the Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.
Otoniya Juliane Okot Bitek is the writer of 100 Days (University of Alberta 2016), a book of poetry that reflects on the meaning of memory two decades after the Rwanda genocide. The collection was nominated for several writing prizes including the 2017 B.C. Book Prize, the Pat Lowther Award, the 2017 Alberta Book Awards, and the 2017 Canadian Authors Award for Poetry. It won the IndieFab Book of the Year Award 2017 for poetry and the Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry 2017.
Her poem Migration: Salt Stories was shortlisted for the 2017 National Magazine Awards for Poetry in Canada. Her poem Gauntlet was longlisted for the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize and is the title of her most recent work, a chapbook from Nomados Press (2019). She completed her PhD at the University of British Columbia, in October 2019.
Okot Bitek was announced as the Ellen and Warren Tallman Writer in Residence 2020-2021 at the Simon Fraser University. The Ellen & Warren Tallman Writer-in-Residence Program is supported by Shadbolt Endowment, Canada Council for the Arts, SFU’s Dean of Arts and Social Sciences, SFU’s Department of English, and the Ellen & Warren Tallman Endowment. Some of the previous residents of the program that started in 2004 have been Jordan Scott, Cecily Nicholson, Anakana Schofield, Ivan Coyote and Carleigh Baker
There will be a virtual celebration of Dr. Okot Bitek’s residency and a reading from her work on Thursday, October 8th, 2020 (7-8 p.m. Canada Time). You can RSVP to the university to participate in this event by emailing [email protected].
