Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

Arts manager, event producer, development professional specialising in multimedia communications, arts and new media education specialist, creative economy advisor, traveller, seeker, Indian Ocean lover and novelist, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor draws from and is inspired by knowledge and experiences gained from a multiplicity of environments, encounters, quests, expressions and spaces, places, landscapes and people. Yvonne is best known for her short Story, Weight of Whispers, which won the Caine Prize for African Writing (2003) and which has been published and translated into several languages. Her other works include, My Mother, My Muse (Back Arts Quarterly, Vol 9, Issue 2, 2004), Trial of Terremotto ('A' is for Ancestors; anthology, Kwela Press, South Africa, The Knife Grinder's tale, The State of Tides, Dressing the Dirge ( Little Black Dress: An Anthology of Short Stories by Women Writers ed. Susie Maguire) which has been adapted for and beautifully performed on stage by Dr. Mshai Mwangola. At present, Yvonne works for a regional higher education initiative, (Aga Khan University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Academic Planning) that involves her in conceptualising, developing and planning for a world-standard, campus that will open in Arusha, Tanzania in a few years' time. Finally, Yvonne is polishing off the manuscript of her first novel, Dust and Memory. She is almost sure that it will be out in the world sometime in 2011.