Joëlle Sambi was born in Brussels. She spent her childhood in Kinshasa, returning to Belgium in 2001 to study journalism. Although she dissociates her origins from her writing, the Congo and its history, as well as contemporary Belgium, are ever-present in her stories. She lives on the border, and is a woman who writes short stories, novels, radio pieces, poetry and essays. Joëlle Sambi raises questions about identity, norms and belonging; she is caught between several languages (Lingala, Swahili, French…) and her writing bears the traces of this. The strangeness of her language, combined with the fragmentation and interweaving of stories and the disruption of chronology, unsettles our senses and confuses us. Her latest book, a collection of poetry entitled “Caillasses”, was published by Editions l’Arbre de Diane in September 2021.

https://joellesambi.tumblr.com