Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, Goretti Kyomuhendo and Leïla Slimani in conversation with Aleya Kassam

The woman as free

Nairobi Litfest 2025, Saturday 28 June 2025

Creating complex portraits of womanhood has been a through line across the works of award-winning authors Leila Slimani, a Franco-Moroccan author and journalist, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, whose debut novel When We Were Birds won the 2023 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature and, Goretti Kyomuhendo, one of Uganda’s leading novelists and founding member of Ugandan Women Writers’ Association, FEMWRITE. The trio take a deep dive into the necessity of this firm resolve across their fiction and non-fiction work. In conversation with Aleya Kassam.