Otoniya J. Okot Bitek
Otoniya J. Okot Bitek is a professor and writer of poetry and fiction. She earned her PhD from the University of British Columbia and teaches creative writing at Queen’s University. Okot Bitek’s first collection, 100 Days, won the 2017 IndieFab Book of the Year Award for poetry and the 2017 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry. Her second collection, A is for Acholi, won the 2023 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Born in Kenya to Ugandan parents, she now lives in Kingston, Ontario.
Writers & Books
Award History
Jury Citation
“We, the Kindling is a poet’s novel in the very best way: the stark music of powerful individual voices that resonate with trauma, resilience, and tradition. This is a history of stories, insightful testimonies that insist in their frank beauty that history is not forgotten but is transmuted into the most fundamental questions, the topography of “a map of the places we’ve been… a map you won’t find on any atlas.” Otoniya J. Okot Bitek writes with mastery of lives forged in war; a testament to the strength of these uncompromising and empowering witnesses, smouldering with life and hard-won possibility.”—2025 Atwood Gibson Prize Jury (Gary Barwin, Ali Bryan, and Jasmine Sealy)Works Recognized by WT