Kayo Chingonyi featured at Afrolit Sans Frontières Season 5 from Leeds, UK on Wednesday, July 29, 2020. He was hosted by Remy Ngamije.
Afrolit Sans Frontières, a virtual literary festival for writers of African origin, was founded by author and publisher Zukiswa Wanner as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic international lockdowns. The festival format is two sessions a day on Instagram Live with an artist moderated by a host who also fields questions from audience members. There have been four editions; Season 1 from March 23-30; Season 2 from April 20-27; Season 3 from May 25 – June 1; and Season 4 from June 29-July 6.
Season 5 kicked off on July 27 and festival goers have so far interacted with Lerato Mogoatlhe in Johannesburg, South Africa, Joe Khamisi in Texas, USA, Frances Mensah Williams in London, UK and Conceição Evaristo in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The third day of the festival kicked off with Kayo Chingonyi streaming in from Leeds, UK. Chingonyi’s debut collection, Kumukanda (Chatto & Windus, 2017) was a Guardian and Telegraph Book of the Year, and the winner of the 2018 International Dylan Thomas Prize and a Somerset Maugham Award. A former Burgess Fellow at the Centre for New Writing, University of Manchester, and Associate Poet at The Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, Kayo is now Poetry Editor for The White Review, and an Assistant Professor in the Department of English Studies at Durham University. He has performed his work at festivals and events around the world. A Blood Condition, a new collection of poems, will be published by Chatto & Windus, and his memoir Prodigal, is forthcoming with Picador.
Kayo spoke about his process as a poet and how his other work like as a DJ influences it, what winning the Dylan Thomas Prize meant to him, what would be his TED talk to make him Internet famous (Jollof Is Overated, Discuss) and much more. Watch the Leeds-based poet in discussion with his host Remy Ngamije in the below video.
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