Taban Lo Liyong

Taban talking with his daughter Noela Liyong Miogga

By his own account, Liyong was born in southern Sudan and taken at a young age by his family to northern Uganda where he grew up. He attended National Teachers College in Kampala, Uganda’s capital, before continuing his undergraduate studies at Knoxville College in Tennessee and Howard University in Washington, D.C. He went on to earn a master of fine arts degree at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, specializing in creative writing. After returning to Uganda in 1968 he worked at the University of Nairobi in Kenya for several years, first as a research fellow in the Institute of African Studies, then as a lecturer in the literature department. From 1975 to 1977 he served as chairman of the literature department at the University of Papua New Guinea, after which he returned to Sudan as a senior public relations officer at the University of Juba (now in South Sudan).