Kimbilio’s premiere program is an annual retreat, held each summer on the Taos campus of Southern Methodist University. Fellows and Faculty members gather in the Carson National Forest for a week of writing, solitude, and solidarity.
Kimbilio also partners with Write On Door County to provide individual residencies for our Fellows at free or substantially reduced rates. The Community of Writers provides scholarships to our Fellows to attend their summer conference.
The Kimbilio National Fiction Prize is a collaborative project with Four Way Books. A celebration and affirmation of the best in contemporary fiction, the contest is open to writers of the African Diaspora. The prize is open to all diaspora writers and the winning entry is selected by a distinguished fiction writer. Follow Kimbilio social media for news of the next contest date.
Kimbilio Fellow Mary Slechta was selected as the winner of the 2021 Kimbilio National Fiction Prize. Ms. Slechta’s book, Mulberry Street: Stories, will be published in the fall of 2023 by Four Way Books. The judge for the 2021 prize was celebrated author Carolyn Ferrell (Dear Ms. Metropolitan, 2021), who described the winning collection as “incredibly inventive and innovative in its form…[and] an illuminating vision of a Black past, present and future.
Malawi’s Sisters, selected by Edwidge Dandicat, was the winner of the first Kimbilio National Fiction Prize. The novel by Melanie S. Hatter was published by Four Way Books in 2018, and is available at the Kimbilio Bookshop: SHOP KIMBILIO!
Kimbilio also partners with Soft Skull Press to provide an annual publishing opportunity for our Fellows.
The Kimbilio Mentorship Project matches developing and emerging writers with writers who are further along in their careers. Mentors and mentees are provided with resources to support both their work together as well as the mentees professional development goals.
Phase One of the project pairs current Fellows who are close to finishing a first novel or collection of short stories with Kimbilio Faculty members. Fellows are spending the year getting their manuscripts ready for the submission process.
Michealjulius Adani
Sophia Russell
Tochukwu Okafor
Joanne Sills
Angela Flournoy
Lauren Francis-Sharma
Carolyn Ferrell
Ravi Howard
Readings are hosted at Left Bank Books; at High/Low, the St. Louis literary arts center which houses Kimbilio; and at other local venues.
We also partner with other literary organizations to host readings around the country. Previous readings have been hosted in Detroit, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis, among other cities, on the campus of SMU and Sarah Lawrence College; and as part of the Brooklyn Book Festival.
You can make an online donation or support our authors by purchasing one of their books from our online store
