Biography
Juliane Okot Bitek has never stopped exploring the power of narrative, focusing her writing on political and social issues. Her work has been published widely on-line, in print and in literary magazines such as Event, The Capilano Review, Room, and Arc. Her book 100 Days (University of Alberta Press, 2016) is a poetic response to the twentieth anniversary of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Inspired by the photographs of Wangechi Mutu, Juliane wrote a poem a day for a hundred days and posted them on this website and on social media — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. She is currently a PhD student in the Interdisciplinary Students Graduate Program at the University of British Columbia’s Liu Institute for Global Issues. Her doctoral research focuses on the impact of social forgetting on citizenship through the exploration of the quiet story of a 1979 naval accident where several Ugandan exiles lost their lives. She continues to write and speak about issues of home, homeland, exile, citizenship, and diaspora. Juliane has been a Poetry Ambassador for the City of Vancouver, working under the auspices of Vancouver Poet Laureate Rachel Rose.