Stella Nyanzi

born in 1974 in Uganda, is a poet, gender researcher, medical anthropologist, and feminist. She studied journalism, communication studies, and literature at Makerere University in Kampala, graduating in 1996. Four years later, she earned a Master of Science in Medical Anthropology from University College London, followed by a Master of Arts in Development Studies and Finance from Nkumba University in Entebbe. In 2009, she received her PhD from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine with a dissertation on youth sexuality in Africa and gendered power relations. Stella Nyanzi regularly advocates for women’s rights in Uganda through social media and community organizing. Among other initiatives, she organized fundraising campaigns to provide schoolgirls with free menstrual hygiene products – essential support, as many are otherwise forced to miss classes during their periods. In April 2017, she was imprisoned due to her outspoken feminist and political activism against President Yoweri Museveni. A court of appeal overturned the conviction on procedural grounds in February 2020. In early 2021, Nyanzi fled to Kenya for security reasons. Since January 2022, she has been living in Germany with the support of the German PEN Center’s Writers-in-Exile Fellowship. She is a co-founder of PEN Berlin. Her first poetry collection, »No Roses from My Mouth: Poems from Prison«, received the Oxfam Novib/PEN Award for Freedom of Expression in 2020. Her latest collection, »Im Mundexil« [tr. Matthias Göritz], was published in German in May 2025 and was widely praised in the press as »a stunningly beautiful, fierce declaration of love and resistance« (Volker Weidermann, DIE ZEIT).

Last Update: 2025

No Roses from My Mouth: Poems from Prison

Ubuntu Reading Group

Kampala, 2020

Im Mundexil

Verlag Das Wunderhorn

Heidelberg, 2025

[Ü: Matthias Göritz]