Clarisse Baleja Saïdi is a Canadian writer of Rwandan and Congolese descent. Born and raised in Côte d’Ivoire, she has lived in Tunisia, in the U.S., in Tanzania, Canada, and in Portugal, and is currently based in Toronto. Saïdi holds a Bachelor of Arts in English Language and Literature from Carleton University (2012) and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing of Fiction from the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program (2017.) She has taught creative writing and academic composition at the University of Michigan where she herself received Hopwood Awards for her own fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and drama. Saïdi has been the recipient of fellowship support from MacDowell, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, La Napoule Art Foundation, and more. She is at work on a debut novel that contemplates time, dislocation, and cultures of intolerance, as well as on a collection of autoethnographic essays on artistic migration and global blackness.

During her stay in Wiepersdorf the author will complete the final touches to her first novel Now Never Ends alongside working on some essays and a second novel in progress.