On 18th April 2013, the Rift Valley Institute (RVI) and Kwani Trust co-hosted a Nairobi Forum event at which Somali author Nuruddin Farah spoke with Binyavanga Wainaina, Founding Editor of Kwani?. Farah is the winner of the Neustadt International Prize for literature and the Lettre Ulysses Award, and has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. His body of work includes two trilogies, Variations on the Theme of an African Dictatorship (1980) and Blood in the Sun (1986). His most recent novel, Crossbones, was published in 2011 and will be published in Kenya by Kwani Trust in august 2013. Farah chose to go into exile at the age of 26 when his writings put him at odds with the government of President Maxamed Siad Barre.