CLARISSE BALEJA SAÏDI

Clarisse Baleja Saïdi was born and raised in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. A writer of Rwandan and Congolese (DRC) descent and of Ugandan and Canadian dual nationality, she completed a BA in English Language and Literature at Carleton University and an MFA in Creative Writing at the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan.

Baleja is the recipient of fellowships from Hedgebrook, MacDowell, Yaddo, ART OMI, and the Vermont Studio Center, among others. Her writing has been awarded the Theodore Roethke Poetry prize, Hopwood Prizes in fiction, nonfiction, and drama, the John Wagner prize, a Marina Nemat Creative Writing Prize, Penguin Random House’s short story prize and more. Her nonfiction has received support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts Council, and in 2022-2023, she was a fiction fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.

Currently, Baleja is at work on a fin-de-siècle novel and a memoir-in-vignettes. Her work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, POETRY magazine and The Fiddlehead. She splits her time between Canada and Portugal.