Photo by Jairo Alvarez

Clarisse Baleja Saïdi (b. Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire) is a bilingual writer of Rwandan and Congolese (DRC) descent and Ugandan and Canadian dual nationality. A graduate of the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, she’s received fellowships from Hedgebrook, MacDowell, Yaddo, ART OMI, and the Vermont Studio Center, among others. Her writing has been awarded the Theodore Roethke Poetry prize, Hopwood Prizes in fiction, nonfiction and drama, the John Wagner Prize, a Marina Nemat Creative Writing Prize, Penguin Random House’s Short Story Prize and more. Baleja is the recipient of grants from the Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, and was named a 2022-2023 Fine Arts Work Center fiction fellow. She currently serves as a style editor at Toronto’s literary journal BRICK.

Writing is alchemical. I cherish the process of amassing pages and stories, only for a narrative to transform in its own essential way. Eventually, order emerges, and with it, a world that was there yet defies expectations. Magic, I tell you.

Most days, you’ll find me at a desk, writing on home, love, and power —on being, othering, and belonging.

En attendant, I’m learning to say the little things often. My Substack newsletter Virtual Village is where I do so. Think ‘belief pieces’ rather than opinion ones.

Thanks for reading me in the in-between.

Clarisse Baleja Saïdi is represented by literary agent Heather Schroder at Compass Literary.