Support Kimbilio on Giving Tuesday 2024

Beginning in 2013, over ten annual week-long retreats, Kimbilio has provided a refuge where writers from the African diaspora can discuss their fiction in a community where their work is recognized, valued, and discussed in a supportive environment. Fellows enter the community at the emerging stage of their careers and beyond. In their evaluations, Fellows such as Jamel Brinkley, Rion Amilcar Scott, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Denne Michelle Norris, and Jennifer Maritza McCauley report that the Kimbilio community provided them with an invaluable boost of recognition that encouraged them in the direction of success careers. Kimbilio has hosted readings and panels across the country, and in 2022 initiated an ongoing collaboration with the Kranzberg Arts Foundation and Left Bank Books to host a reading series from its home base in St. Louis. Kimbilio partners with Four Way Books to sponsor the Kimbilio National Fiction Prize, which will publish its third selected book in spring of 2025: THERE'S NOTHING LEFT FOR YOU HERE by Allegra Solomon. In 2024 Soft Skull Press partnered with Kimbilio to publish a new collection by Kimbilio Fellow Amina Gautier: THE BEST THAT YOU CAN DO.We have partnered with the Write On Door County to provide individual retreat opportunities for Fellows. In the fall of 2021 we initiated our Mentorship Project, which pairs Fellows who are close to finishing manuscripts with Kimbilio faculty members with the goal of bringing those projects to completion. In 2024 there are four Fellows in the program. Kimbilio Fellows have been admitted to prestigious MFA and PhD programs, and since our inception, dozens of books have been published by Fellows, books which have been finalists for and/or awardees from PEN, Hurston/Wright, Lambda Literary, the National Book Foundation, Mann Booker, and Whiting, among many others.