Event

Words in times of conflict

Kenyan exiled author Philo Ikonya discusses her personal journey and works with Scottish PEN Treasurer and author Linda Cracknell. Linda Cracknell has written radio drama, including The Lamp (BBC Radio 4, 2011), set and recorded at Innerpeffray Library and imagining the visit of a Kenyan librarian.

Audience members are invited to walk in the footsteps of the original library borrowers before the event.

Authors: Philo Ikonya and Linda Cracknell
Chair: Drew Campbell

Philo Ikonya: A writer and human rights activist is a member of PEN Austria. Born in Kenya she is moved to Norway in exile. Her fiction includes two novels, Leading the Night and Kenya, will you marry me? She has published three poetry anthologies.

Ikonya is known for speaking out against injustice and corruption and has written extensively on governance, mass poverty and post-election violence in Kenya. In 2009 she was arrested and beaten by police during a peaceful protest in Nairobi against food hyperinflation with fellow writer Fwamba N C Fwamba. Both authors required hospitalization after the ordeal and have been denied the right to lodge an official complaint against the police officer who assaulted them.

Linda Cracknell: Author Linda Cracknell and Scottish PEN member has lived in Scotland since 1990. Previously a teacher of English in Zanzibar, Education Officer for WWF and was writer-in-residence at Hugh MacDiarmid's last home, Brownsbank Cottage, near Biggar from 2002-5.

Cracknell has written radio drama, including The Lamp (BBC Radio 4, 2011), set and recorded at Innerpeffray Library and imagining the visit of a Kenyan librarian. Since 2000 she has published two collections of short stories, a novel Call of the Undertow and a nonfiction book about walking and memory, Doubling Back - Ten paths trodden in memory. Linda Cracknell lives in Highland Perthshire and is currently writer in residence at Edinburgh's Sick Kids hospital.