Clarisse Baleja Saïdi is a Canadian writer of Rwandan and Congolese descent, born and raised in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Saïdi earned her M.F.A. from the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program, where she received Hopwood Awards for her fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and drama, and was a 2022-23 fiction fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center.
Baleja is the recipient of support from MacDowell, Yaddo, The Whiting Foundation, Hedgebrook, Callaloo, La Napoule Art Foundation, and more, as well as grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, the Whiting Foundation, and more.
At MacDowell in 2019, she worked on her novel in progress and made tremendous strides towards completing it. During her 2024 residency, Baleja developed a nonfiction project.
