CNN calls Kenyan writer Shailja Patel “the people-centered face of globalization”. Her publishing debut, Migritude, based on her acclaimed, internationally touring one-woman show, was a #1 Amazon poetry bestseller, a Seattle Times bestseller, and was shortlisted for Italy’s Camaiore Prize. Migritude is taught in over 100 colleges and universities worldwide. The Minnesota Review journal of Duke University Press will publish a special issue on Migritude in 2019. Patel’s poems have been translated into 17 languages. Her essays and commentaries appear in the Guardian, Le Monde Diplomatique, and Internazionale, among others. She has appeared on BBC, Al-Jazeera, and NPR. Honors include a Sundance Theatre Fellowship, a Voices of Our Nations poetry award, the Fanny-Ann Eddy Poetry Award, the Nordic Africa Institute African Writer Fellowship and Jozi Book Fair Guest Writer. In 2019, the Nobel Women’s Initiative selected her for a global activist spotlight, and she received the Brittle Paper Anniversary Award for her 14-tweet thread, “On Postcolonial Theory.” Trained as a political economist and accountant, Patel is a founding member of Kenyans For Peace, Truth and Justice, a civil society coalition which works for an equitable democracy in Kenya. The African Women’s Development Fund named her one of Fifty Inspirational African Feminists, ELLE India Magazine selected her as one of its 25 New Guard Influencers, and Poetry Africa honored her as Letters To Dennis Poet, continuing the legacy of renowned anti-apartheid activist poet Dennis Brutus. She represented Kenya at the London Cultural Olympiad’s Poetry Parnassus. Her work currently features in the Smithsonian Museum’s groundbreaking “Beyond Bollywood” exhibition. Follow her on twitter at @shailjapatel