As promised the Storymoja Hay Festival is bringing you performances and conversation to make up for the cancelled 4th day of the festival.

This week has seen the outstanding performance of The Vagina Monologues which left audiences awestruck and eliciting responses such as:

@SMHayFest The Vagina Monologues was amazing and touching at the same time! Loved it. Keep it up. Definitely supporting @1BillionRisingD

— Muthoni Mwangi (@Muthoniwamwangi) October 24, 2013

The Vagina Monologues were brilliant! A standing ovation for @SMHayFest!

— Sadia Ahmed (@SadiaOfficial) October 24, 2013

The beautiful cast of Vagina Monologues @SMHayFest edition 2013 Its bn lovely and quite informative and eye opening. pic.twitter.com/wIHUo4e18z

— Walubengo (@CptWalubengo) October 24, 2013

Tonight, 25th October, at 7.30pm

Sitawa Namwalie brings you ‘Silence is a Woman’ at the Michael Joseph Centre, Safaricome House. This show promises to take you on a thought provoking journey… The journey of a woman and a nation! You cannot afford to miss it!

Next week, 4 shows by Jane Bussman promise to leave breathless. Jane Bussman brought you laughter in inappropriate doses at the 2010 Storymoja Hay Festival. She returns with a warning on the package.

WARNING: THESE SHOWS ARE REALLY, REALLY RUDE. Not just a bit naughty, but REALLY REALLY RUDE

BONO AND GELDOF ARE C*NTS: Tuesday 29th Oct 7.30pm Purdy Arms Karen & Wednesday 30th Oct 7.30pm Vineyard Rhapta Rd Westlands

DISTINGUISHED LADIES: Thurs 31st Oct 7.30pm Vineyard Rhapta Rd Westlands & Friday 1st Nov 8.00pm Purdy Arms Karen.

See more details on the Jane Bussman shows.

Highlights of November 2 2013 Mini Fest: 

We will end the festivities with a day full of conversation and performances on November 2nd 2013 at the Nairobi National Museum.

Kofi Awoonor Tribute Lecture

11.00am – 12.15pm| Louis leakey Auditorium

Founding editor of Kwani?, Caine Prize Winner and author of ‘One Day I Will Write About This Place’, Binyavanga Wainaina honours the late great Ghanaian Writer, Kofi Awoonor.

In Partnership with Kwani Trust

Community Policing and Online Activism: Am I My Brother’s Keeper?

11.00am – 12.15pm|Ampitheatre

Kenya: We are one… or are we? Join this engaging discussion on communities’ reactions and its effects on cohesion, segregation and shaping identity. How much have you done or given to secure the welfare of your community?

In Partnership with UP Magazine

Real Life Events Inspire Fiction

12.45pm -2.00pm| Ampitheatre

Authors Kinyanjui Kombani (The Last Villains of Molo) and Richard Crompton (The Honey Guide) both set their novels against a backdrop of real life events – the Molo tribal clashes of 1992 and the electoral violence of 2007.

What are the issues and ethics of incorporating real-life events into fiction? How does reality work in a narrative context? And does there need to be a certain distance, in time or space, between the events described and the decision to create a work of fiction about them? Can novelists tell a greater truth about real events than journalists or historians are capable of? Or are they exploiting human tragedy for the sake of entertainment?

Disrupting Sanitised History: The ICC Witness Project

2.30pm – 3.45pm| Louis Leakey Auditorium

Powerful readings from ‘Their Justice Shall Be Our Justice: A Dialogue on the ICC Witness Project’, which originally appeared in The New Inquiry. The ICC Witness Project is a collaboration between Kenyan poets to imagine and amplify the voices of some of the missing witnesses for the ICC trial, to make sure the victims and survivors of the post-election violence that rocked Kenya in 2008 are not forgotten.

Look through the full programme for the November 2nd Mini Festival.

WARNING: THESE SHOWS ARE REALLY, REALLY RUDE. Not just a bit naughty, but REALLY REALLY RUDE.

2 NEW SHOWS AT 2 VENUES
4 NIGHTS
4 CHANCES TO BE APPALLED

 BONO AND GELDOF ARE C*NTS

The political comedy rant that sold out and blew the lid off the Sydney Opera House and sold out the Frontline Club in hours.

BONO AND GELDOF ARE C*NTS is a lighthearted look at foreign aid and who it really aids. This foul-mouthed, funny and frightening parody lecture on charity, Africa and celebrities asks: when did poverty become an industry that needs poverty to stay in business? Jane takes us on a journey through Africa, trying to find out why being decent attracts wankers. 1 hour 15 minutes with drinks interval.

Written by Jane Bussmann & Mombasa-born, Oscar-shortlisted Naisola Grimwood

Tuesday 29th Oct 7.30pm Purdy Arms Karen

2500KHS inc. delicious dinner. MPESA Buy Goods 2500KSH to till 56952 purdyarms.com

Weds 30th Oct 7.30pm Vineyard Rhapta Rd Westlands

1000KSH advance MPESA 0717 165 646,

Or 1500KSH cash at door

Beer from 200, wine from 350, bitings from 500/plate

DISTINGUISHED LADIES

DISTINGUISHED LADIES:  A live script test, Jane will read an all-new episode and show a sneak glimpse of the pilot of the hilariously rude sitcom in development. Distinguished Ladies had 700 people queuing round the block in London at its underground taping, recording the biggest number of laughs-per-minute since Blackadder. Distinguished Ladies is set at the world’s worst magazine and loosely based on The Worst Date Ever

“I found myself convulsed with sinus-clearing snorts of astonished laughter” – Michela Wrong;

“The funniest thing we’ve ever read” – InStyle

Live test of sitcom-in-development Mombasa is calling “Vulgar and common” and Heat magazine is calling “The funniest sitcom in YEARS.”

1 hour 15 minutes with drinks interval.

Thurs 31st Oct 7.30pm Vineyard Rhapta Rd Westlands
1000KSH advance (MPESA to 0715 101 073 & 0720 960 322)

Or 1500KSH at door.

Beer from 200, wine from 350, bitings from 500 per plate

Friday 1st Nov 8.00pm Purdy Arms Karen.

2500KHS inc. delicious dinner. MPESA Buy Goods 2500KSH to till 56952 purdyarms.com

Sitawa Namwalie’s new show is as provocative as her earlier work ‘Cut Off My Tongue‘, which toured Kenya, Uganda and the UK to great acclaim. Silence is a Woman chronicles the journey of a woman, and the journey of Kenya as they both move through history, telling, retelling and experiencing narratives that continue to haunt this nation. By asking awkward questions, Silence is a Woman reminds us we are on a quest to heal ourselves and reclaim our her stories.

Join us on the evening of 25^th October 2013 at The Michael Joseph Centre, Safaricom House as we embark with Sitawa Namwalie on this journey.

Tickets: 2000/= (50% contribution to startalibrary.org)

Back in March, Storymoja’s Aleya Kassam received a standing ovation for her brilliant recital of The Woman Who Loved to Make Vaginas Happy, concluding the performance of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues. Join us on the evening of 24^th October 2013 to see this remarkable performance featuring director Mumbi Kaigwa and her cast: Chichi Sei, June Gachui, Aleya Kassam, Savanne Kemoli, Seroun and Patricia Kihoro.

Tickets: 2000/= (Proceeds go to Womens Rights Awareness Programme and startalibrary.org)

This year’s StoryMoja Hay Festival boasted a fantastic line-up of renowned African authors and poets.

The festival was tragically cut short by the attacks on Westgate. Thankfully, there were several days of inspiring lectures and readings.

One writer, Teju Cole, perhaps had the most hype surrounding him. Cole, a Nigerian-American writer and photographer, is a critical darling whose words and opinions seem to be resonating with thousands of people.

One of his essays, The White Saviour Industrial Complex, which discussed the problematic nature of KONY 2012 and other “white savior” projects in Africa, went viral and put Cole on the international map. See more at The Star.co.ke

“There is no freedom, only degrees of tyranny” award winning American poet and Opthamoligist Dr Neal Hall’s statement to an audience seated in a miniature amphitheatre at the Nairobi National Museum cripples any reasoning behind carving out a day and calling it a time to celebrate independence. Why celebrate something that in reality may not exist?

Hall joined a panel of two other poets British based Somali poet Warsan Shire and South African Mongane Wally Serote at the StoryMoja Hay festival to “voice the unspoken” among them; freedom, oppression and racial identity. See more The Star.co.ke

Temo Buliro was one of the writers at this year’s Storymoja Hay Festival. She recently launched her second book Faceless Voices,which is a collection of short stories based on contemporary African and modern day USA.

The tales focus on the senses; sight, hearing, taste, smell and intuition. The stories address many of the concerns in today’s society. These include suppressed expressions and emotion; infidelity and divorce; career ambitions and the “glass ceilings”; mental illness or disease; and domestic violence.

To Buliro, writing is her passion and she enjoys every bit of it. Her work has appeared in several leading East Africa newspapers and magazines. See more at The Star.co.ke

Alice Vincent was at the Hay Festival Nairobi when terror struck. She hears the writers who refused to be silenced.

Half way through the Storymoja Hay Festival I stopped concentrating. Two miles away, in the only part of Nairobi I had become familiar with during my short stay, militant Islamist group Al-Shabaab had opened fire on innocent people in the Westgate Mall. Helicopters flew overhead, and although normality prevailed around the festival tents, I felt a little sick, a little scared, a little short of breath.

The speculated casualty numbers passed through Twitter to word of mouth around the National Museum of Kenya, the leafy, rambling location for the festival. By lunchtime 12 had died, shortly after it was 20. See more at The Telegraph.