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Honoris Causa » Ken Bugul
Ken Bugul, the Wolof pseudonym of Mariétou Mbaye Biléoma, was born in 1947 in Ndoucoumane, a former region in western Senegal. In 1982, she made her debut in literature with her fictionalized autobiography, "Le baobab fou."
The writer is the author of eleven novels. Her life is deeply marked by the uprooting of her family in her early childhood. She has traveled the world, speaking on women's rights and family planning, promoting therapeutic writing and rehabilitation in vulnerable settings. Her humorous narrative style has earned a distinct voice in African literature. She explained that she writes in French, the language of her colonial upbringing, a tool that has allowed her to reach a wider audience, although her content focuses on the Wolof world.
Ken Bugul is one of the most important writers on the African continent, and her work offers a fascinating insight into the human condition, exile, and the search for a place in the world and an identity, making her not only an African writer, but a universal one.
Her godmothers at the ceremony will be Dulce María González Doreste and Alba Rodríguez García.
