Stella Nyanzi

Stella Nyanzi

Ugandan academic, activist, and poet Stella Nyanzi will have a book tour around the Kenyan cities of Nairobi, Mombasa, and Kisumu from September 13 – 21, 2022.

Stella Nyanzi is a medical anthropologist who has published widely in academia on topics at the intersections of culture, health, law, gender, and sexualities. She is an ardent writer on social media where she comments on and debates contemporary social-political occurrences, and she writes poetry, mainly on social media.

The outspoken activist on women’s rights and the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex people has served jail time for ‘cyber harassment.’ This is for a poem she wrote on Facebook in September 2018 criticising President Museveni (and his mother). For her activism, she has received the Oxfam Novib/PEN International Award for Freedom of Expression 2020. In January 2022, she moved to Germany on a writers-in-exile program run by PEN Germany, with her three children.

Dr Nyanzi has three works of poetry to her name No Roses From My Mouth (2020) which was written while she was in jail Don’t Come in My Mouth: Poems That Rattled Uganda (2021), and Eulogies of My Mouth Poems For A Poisoned Uganda (2022). She has announced on social media that she will be conducting a tour of Kenya starting Tuesday, September 13.

Here is her updated schedule;

Thursday, September 15, 3 pm

Stella Nyanzi at Kenya National Theatre
  • Kenya National Theatre, Ukumbi Mdogo, Nairobi

Saturday, September 17

  • Coalition of Human Rights Defenders, Mathare, Nairobi

Monday, September 19

  • Mwamko, Kisumu

Wednesday, September 21

  • Technical University of Mombasa

If you are in the general area, you are encouraged to attend.