About / Press Kit

Photo: D. Ross Cameron

Click here to download the above image in high resolution (421 kb).

Short Bio

Note: Shailja is pronounced Shell-jah.

Kenyan poet, playwright and theatre artist, Shailja Patel, has performed her work in venues ranging from New York's Lincoln Centre, to Durban's Poetry Africa Festival. Her one-woman show, Migritude, received Ford Foundation funding for a Kenyan tour, and an NPN Creation Fund Award. CNN describes Shailja as an artist "who exemplifies globalization as a people-centered phenomenon of migration and exchange." The Gulf Today (United Arab Emirates) calls her "the poetic equivalent of Arundhati Roy."

Full Bio

Kenyan poet, playwright and theatre artist, Shailja Patel, has performed at venues across the US, from New York's Lincoln Center to San Quentin Prison, and globally from Vienna to Rome to South Africa. She has been described as an artist "who exemplifies globalization as a people-centered phenomenon of migration and exchange" (CNN), and "the poetic equivalent of Arundhati Roy" (The Gulf Today, UAE).

In December 2006, Patel premiered her first full-length show, Migritude, in the San Francisco Bay Area, to packed houses and standing ovations. The show was chosen for the season premiere of KQED TV's Spark! Arts and Culture programme. The Ford Foundation funded a critically-acclaimed tour Kenya tour of Migritude in 2007.

Patel has spoken at more than thirty colleges, universities, and conferences, including keynote student conference addresses at Yale and Brown. Her poems are included in the online exhibits of the International Museum of Women, the Museum of the African Diaspora, and the Asian Poets Collection of New York University. They have been translated into several languages, and used in high schools, colleges, and workshops from South Africa to Japan.

Patel's work has received awards from, among others, the National Performance Network, Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, the New York Lesbian and Gay Center, and Indian American Women Empowered. She is an active member of Kenyans for Peace With Truth and Justice, a coalition of legal, human rights, and governance organizations, and individual Kenyans, working for a just and equitable resolution to the Kenya crisis.