Kwani Trust has been awarded a 2010 Prince Claus Award, given annually in recognition of exceptional achievements in the field of Culture and Development. Each year, this prestigious award run by the Prince Claus Fund invites an expanding network of colleagues, partners and experts in artistic and cultural fields that are relevant to the Fund's mission to nominate candidates for the award.

Kwani Trust is honored to be among the 9 winners of the EUR 25,000 Award, which will be presented in Nairobi in December 2010 by the Netherlands Ambassador to Kenya, HE. Laetitia van den Assum. The Trust plans to use the award money as a seed fund for a manuscript project that produces novel-length manuscripts between 2011 and 2013, with the project kicking off in early 2011. Further details will be available through the press and the Kwani Trust website from December 2010.

About Kwani Trust

Kwani Trust is a Kenyan based literary network dedicated to developing quality creative writing and committed to the growth of the creative industry through the publishing and distribution of contemporary African writing, offering training opportunities, producing literary events and establishing and maintaining global literary networks.

Our vision is to create a society that uses its stories to see itself more coherently.

Our flagship publication, Kwani?, is a journal founded by some of Kenya's most exciting new writers and has 5 print editions to date, each containing more than 300 pages of new journalism, fiction, experimental writing, poetry, cartoons, photographs, cutting edge academic papers, ideas, literary travel writing & creative non-fiction. The Trust additionally publishes the Kwani-ni? Series (small pocket size short story collections), and after the 2007/08 Post Election Violence, published a Visual Narrative titled Kenya Burning in partnership with The GoDown Arts Centre.

Kwani Trust also curates various literary events: Kwani? Open Mic, a monthly poetry event; Sunday Salon Nairobi, a prose reading series; writers' forums, public debates, workshops and competitions; and the biennial Kwani? Literary Festival, which features continental and global cultural figures.