Network Reflections: Achiro P. Olwoch on writing as refuge and an act of defiance

Achiro P. Olwoch is among the many practitioners and scholars assisted by SAR this past year who have continued their work despite numerous challenges—both visible and invisible. Olwoch, a queer woman artist in Uganda, used her writings to build a refuge for the exiled and marginalized to release their pain and imagine new possibilities for the future. This work was a dangerous act of resistance and survival that, in her words, “challenged power, questioned silences, and amplified voices that many wanted erased.” Yet despite her determination to stay and continue her work, the passage of Uganda’s anti-homosexuality laws forced her to seek sanctuary elsewhere.

Now an Assistant Professor at Vassar College, a position created via the Practitioners at Risk program at SAR, Olwoch reflects on writing as refuge and an act of defiance.

 

You have said of writing your novel, The End of Swahili Lines, that it was “like building a sanctuary.”Could you share more about how your writing has provided a sanctuary for you (and perhaps for your readers and audiences as well)?  

When I described writing The End of Swahili Lines as “building a sanctuary,” I meant that the act of writing created a space where I could lay down memory, pain, and longing without fear of censorship. Exile often strips you of belonging, but on the page I could build a home that did not vanish. Writing allowed me to gather fragments—languages, stories, ghosts—and arrange them into a place where they could coexist.

For me personally, that sanctuary was emotional survival: a way to face trauma, to mourn what was lost, but also to imagine new possibilities of love and freedom. I think for readers and audiences, the sanctuary emerges differently. Some find recognition—especially those who know exile or marginalization. Others are invited into empathy, to sit with stories they may not otherwise encounter. In both cases, the sanctuary becomes communal: writing is no longer just my shelter, but a shared room where voices that were silenced can breathe again.

Please share as much as you would like about the risks and challenges that prompted you to leave Uganda.

Leaving Uganda was not a choice made lightly. As a queer woman and an artist, I lived under constant scrutiny and threat. The passage of anti-homosexuality laws made everyday life dangerous—love itself was criminalized, and stories like mine were deemed unacceptable. At the same time, my creative work was challenging power, questioning silences, and amplifying voices that many wanted erased. That combination—of who I am and the art I make—placed me at risk.

The challenges were both visible and invisible. There were threats to my safety, but there was also the exhaustion of self-censorship, of being unable to breathe fully in my own country. I realized that if I stayed, I might not survive, and certainly my work would not. Leaving meant loss, but it also opened the possibility of living and creating without fear.

How did you first connect with SAR?

I was recommended to SAR by my lawyers at the Artistic Freedom Initiative. They believed that my vision aligned with SAR and believed I would thrive as an educator and an artist.

How has SAR’s support impacted you personally and/or professionally?

SAR’s support has been transformative for me, both personally and professionally. Personally, it gave me the safety and space to begin again as an educator after leaving Uganda, and that has been life-saving. Professionally, SAR created pathways I couldn’t have imagined on my own. Through the opportunities with different universities, I have been challenged to pursue my MFA, which sharpened my craft and gave me the confidence to claim my voice as both a writer and a theater-maker. Now I am preparing to embark on a PhD, where I can deepen my research into queer exile, postcolonial literature, and performance which will solidify my competence as an educator.

SAR has also opened doors at universities where my work could be seen, read, and engaged with seriously. That kind of institutional access is not something exiled writers can take for granted. For me, it has meant mentorship, community, and a platform to keep growing. In short, SAR didn’t just give me refuge—they gave me the tools and networks to rebuild a future as an artist and scholar.

Is there a new or in-process project that you are excited to bring into the world? How does this project fit into your larger objectives or mission as an artist?

Yes—I’m very excited about two forthcoming projects. The first is The Witch Ate My Uterus, an epistolary novel written as one long letter that traces the entanglement of body, belief, and power. It’s a deeply personal excavation, but also one that speaks to how women’s bodies become contested sites of politics and prophecy. The second is When We Stopped Clapping: Letters to an Exiled President, a collection of searing, imagined letters from Ugandans in exile or silenced by state violence. These letters hold rage, grief, satire, and memory all at once—they are a reckoning.

Both projects fit into my larger mission as an artist, which is to make work that challenges erasure and silence, and to create spaces where marginalized voices—especially queer, exiled, and African voices—are heard on their own terms. For me, writing is always an act of testimony and survival, but also of imagination: I want to leave behind a body of work that insists on complexity, insists on presence, and insists on freedom.

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