Cirrus@Austlit

Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor (Kenya) is involved with the worlds of creativity, technology, imagination and innovation. She works with interdisciplinary teams in support of the arts particularly in East Africa and has been a key facilitator of creative, innovation and knowledge economy conversations and events. She intends to expand the regional stake and play in the global knowledge economy through practical and multi-sectoral strategies. Owuor is a creative writer who won the 2003 Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story, Weight of Whispers. Another of her stories, The Knife Grinder’s Tale, was made into a short film. She has had several pieces–fiction and non-fiction, published in publications worldwide.

'Yvonne Owuor was formerly the Executive Director of the Zanzibar International Film Festival/Festival of the Dhow countries (2003-5) after which she joined the, then start-up, Aga Khan University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences planning project as Project Co-ordinator. She became Programme Specialist (Arts and Digital Media) working with concepts, interdisciplinary models and enabling spaces where proposals for higher education strategies and pedagogical models in creativity, arts, design, innovation, research in the arts, and performative sciences that resonate with East Africa’s ambitions are explored and tested.

'She has engaged with conservation and cultural initiatives that consider and co-opt cultural imagination and life, landscape memory, art, technology, story and envisioned futures, including a gastronomy, Memory and Landscape project in Laikipia, Kenya (2009). ' (Source: http://www.connectcp.org/profiles/profileprint.php?profileid=1938&lang=en )