Koulsy Lamko

Koulsy Lamko is a Chadian-born playwright, poet, novelist and university lecturer. Born in Dadouar, Lamko left his country for Burkina Faso in 1979 due to the beginning of the civil war. There, he became acquainted with Thomas Sankara and involved with the Institute of Black Peoples in Ouagadougou. Lamko spent ten years promoting community theater in Burkina Faso through the Theater of the Community and helped found the International Festival of Theatre for Development. Some of his poetry was published in Revue Noire in 1994. In 1997 he co-released the album Bir Ki Mbo of mixed poetry and music in tribute to Sankara in collaboration with Stéphane Scott and Rémi Stengel. A regular attendant at the Limousin Festival International des Francophonies, he briefly lived in Limoges, France. He then moved to Rwanda, where he read for his doctorate at the National University in Butare while founding the university's Center for the Arts and the Theater and teaching theater and creative writing. His doctoral thesis was on emerging theatrical aesthetics in Africa. His experience in Rwanda led him to write his novel, La phalène des collines, about the 1994 genocide.