James Murua is a Kenyan blogger, journalist and media consultant, who has written for a variety of media outlets. He is a former columnist for the The Star newspaper in Kenya, leaving to become a full-time blogger. [1]
In 2013, he founded a website – James Murua.com – that became the leading online platform covering the African literary scene. [2] [3] In 2023, the website was renamed to writingafrica.com. [4] Murua explained: "The name change had been something that I had thought about for many years. The actual change was however forced on me as the company that I had outsourced the hosting component of my business had an internal falling out. With the owners abandoning the company, staffers set up a separate company and moved as many of their clients as they could to a new internet host. In that melee, I lost some of my websites including JamesMurua.com which lapsed in the interim to the move. Lucky for me, my company had already saved my content on a separate server and all I needed was register a new domain and start again." [4] Murua also established a YouTube channel as a space for African literature on the web. [5]
James Murua was born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya. [6] He made his debut as a blogger in 2009 with a (now defunct) blog called Nairobiliving.com, [7] and went on to work for The Star newspaper, serving for five years as editor and as a columnist for nine, being voted "Columnist of the Year" in 2009. [8] He has also contributed to Management Magazine (Kenya), The Daily Nation (Kenya), The Nairobian (Kenya), DigifyAfrica.com (South Africa), Johannesburg Review of Books (South Africa), [9] and Africa Independent (South Africa).
He has taken part in international book fairs and has conducted workshops on blogging and social media in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Malawi. He has also been a media consultant for the Goethe Institut, Nairobi. [10]
In 2020, Murua served as a judge for the Caine Prize for African Writing, [11] and he was the founding chairman of the Kendeka Prize for African Writing, "the richest independent literary prize for fiction in East Africa". [12]
Kenneth Binyavanga Wainaina was a Kenyan author, journalist and 2002 winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing. In 2003, he was the founding editor of Kwani? literary magazine. In April 2014, Time magazine included Wainaina in its annual Time 100 as one of the "Most Influential People in the World".
The Caine Prize for African Writing is an annual literary award for the best short story by an African writer, whether in Africa or elsewhere, published in the English language. Founded in the United Kingdom in 2000, the £10,000 prize was named in memory of businessman and philanthropist Sir Michael Harris Caine, former Chairman of Booker Group and of the Booker Prize management committee. The Caine Prize is sometimes called the "African Booker". The Chair of the Board is Ellah Wakatama, appointed in 2019.
Helon Habila Ngalabak is a Nigerian novelist and poet, whose writing has won many prizes, including the Caine Prize in 2001. He worked as a lecturer and journalist in Nigeria before moving in 2002 to England, where he was a Chevening Scholar at the University of East Anglia, and now teaches creative writing at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia.
Sarah Ladipo Manyika FRSL is a British-Nigerian writer of novels, short stories and essays and an active member of the literary community, particularly supporting and amplifying young writers and female voices. She is author of two well received novels, In Dependence (2009) and Like A Mule Bringing Ice Cream To The Sun (2016), as well as the non-fiction collection Between Starshine and Clay: Conversations from the African Diaspora (2022), and her writing has appeared in publications including Granta, Transition, Guernica, and OZY, and previously served as founding Books Editor of OZY. Manyika's work also features in the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa.
Doreen Baingana is a Ugandan writer. Her short story collection, Tropical Fish, won the Grace Paley Award for Short Fiction in 2003 and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for best first book, Africa Region in 2006. Stories in it were finalists for the Caine Prize in 2004 and 2005. She was a Caine Prize finalist for the third time in 2021 and has received many other awards listed below.
Zukiswa Wanner is a South African journalist, novelist and editor born in Zambia and now based in Kenya. Since 2006, when she published her first book, her novels have been shortlisted for awards including the South African Literary Awards (SALA) and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. In 2015, she won the K Sello Duiker Memorial Literary Award for London Cape Town Joburg (2014). In 2014, Wanner was named on the Africa39 list of 39 Sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define trends in African literature. In 2020, she was awarded the Goethe Medal alongside Ian McEwan and Elvira Espejo Ayca, making Wanner the first African woman to win the award.
Moraa Gitaa is a Kenyan novelist, born in Mombasa. She is also a Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution researcher, cultural advocate and arts curator. She is the author of the YA novels Let's Talk About This, The Kigango Oracle, Hila and The Shark Attack.
Ellah Wakatama, OBE, Hon. FRSL, is the Editor-at-Large at Canongate Books, a senior Research Fellow at Manchester University, and Chair of the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing. She was the founding Publishing Director of the Indigo Press. A London-based editor and critic, she was on the judging panel of the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award and the 2015 Man Booker Prize. In 2016, she was a Visiting Professor & Global Intercultural Scholar at Goshen College, Indiana, and was the Guest Master for the 2016 Gabriel Garcia Marquez Foundation international journalism fellowship in Cartagena, Colombia. The former deputy editor of Granta magazine, she was the senior editor at Jonathan Cape, Random House and an assistant editor at Penguin. She is series editor of the Kwani? Manuscript Project and the editor of the anthologies Africa39 and Safe House: Explorations in Creative Nonfiction.
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi is a Ugandan-British novelist and short story writer. Her doctoral novel, The Kintu Saga, was shortlisted and won the Kwani? Manuscript Project in 2013. It was published by Kwani Trust in 2014 under the title Kintu. Her short story collection, Manchester Happened, was published in 2019. She was shortlisted for the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for her story "Let's Tell This Story Properly", and emerged Regional Winner, Africa region. She was the Overall Winner of the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. She was longlisted for the 2014 Etisalat Prize for Literature. She is a lecturer in Creative Writing at Lancaster University. In 2018, she was awarded a Windham-Campbell Prize in the fiction category. In 2021, her novel The First Woman won the Jhalak Prize.
Ber Anena born and previously published as Harriet Anena is a Ugandan writer and performer, whose writing includes poetry, nonfiction and fiction. She is the author of a collection of poems, A Nation In Labour, published in 2015, won the 2018 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa. The Economist described her poetry performance as "an arresting evocation of love and war".
Namwali Serpell is an American and Zambian writer who teaches in the United States. In April 2014, she was named on Hay Festival's Africa39 list of 39 Sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 with the potential and talent to define trends in African literature. Her short story "The Sack" won the 2015 Caine Prize for African fiction in English. In 2020, Serpell won the Belles-lettres category Grand Prix of Literary Associations 2019 for her debut novel The Old Drift.
Bibi Bakare-Yusuf Hon. FRSL is a Nigerian academic, writer and editor from Lagos, Nigeria. She co-founded the publishing company Cassava Republic Press in 2006, in Abuja with Jeremy Weate. Cassava Republic Press was created with a focus on affordability, the need to find and develop local talent, and to publish African writers too often celebrated only in Europe and America. Bakare-Yusuf was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2019, as well as having been selected as a Yale World Fellow, a Desmond Tutu Fellow and a Frankfurt Book Fair Fellow.
Meri Nana-Ama Danquah is a Ghanaian-American writer, editor, journalist and public speaker, whose name at birth was Mildred Mary Nana-Ama Boakyewaa Brobby. She is best known for her 1998 memoir Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman's Journey Through Depression. Her short story "When a Man Loves a Woman" was shortlisted for the 2022 AKO Caine Prize for African Writing.
The Aké Arts and Book Festival is a literary and artistic event held annually in Nigeria. It was founded in 2013 by Lola Shoneyin, a Nigerian writer and poet, in Abeokuta. It features new and established writers from across the world, and its primary focus has been to promote, develop, and celebrate the creativity of African writers, poets, and artists. The Aké Arts and Book Festival has been described as the African continent's biggest annual gathering of literary writers, editors, critics, and readers. The festival has an official website and a dedicated magazine, known as the Aké Review.
Lidudumalingani Mqombothi is a South African writer, film-maker and photographer. His short story "Memories We Lost" won the 2016 Caine Prize for African Writing.
Yewande Omotoso is a South African-based novelist, architect and designer, who was born in Barbados and grew up in Nigeria. She currently lives in Johannesburg. Her two published novels have earned her considerable attention, including winning the South African Literary Award for First-Time Published Author, being shortlisted for the South African Sunday Times Fiction Prize, the M-Net Literary Awards 2012, and the 2013 Etisalat Prize for Literature, and being longlisted for the 2017 Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction. She is the daughter of Nigerian writer Kole Omotoso, and the sister of filmmaker Akin Omotoso.
Enkare Review is a Nairobi-based literary magazine established in August 2016, after initial conversations between Alexis Teyie, Troy Onyango, and Carey Baraka. In its short period of existence, it has published Taiye Selasi, Junot Díaz, Maaza Mengiste, Zukiswa Wanner, Namwali Serpell, Richard Ali, Lidudumalingani, Jericho Brown, Harriet Anena, Beverley Nambozo, Leila Aboulela, Nnedi Okorafor, Stanley Onjezani Kenani, Tendai Huchu, Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún among others, and interviews with prolific African writer Chuma Nwokolo; and The New Yorker's editor, David Remnick.
Troy Onyango is a Kenyan writer, editor and lawyer. His work has appeared in journals and magazines including Prairie Schooner, Wasafiri, Caine Prize Anthology, Brittle Paper, and Transition Magazine issue 121, for which his short story "The Transfiguration" was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His short story "For What Are Butterflies Without Their Wings" won the fiction prize for the inaugural Nyanza Literary Festival (NALIF) Prize.
Makena Onjerika is a Kenyan writer, who won the 2018 Caine Prize for African Writing making her the fourth writer from her country to do so—following wins by Binyavanga Wainaina in 2002 and Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor in 2003, and Okwiri Oduor in 2013.
Idza Luhumyo is a Kenyan short story writer, whose work explores Kenyan coastal identities. In July 2020, Luhumyo was announced as the inaugural recipient of the Margaret Busby New Daughters of Africa Award. She was the winner of the 2021 Short Story Day Africa Prize with her story "Five Years Next Sunday", which also won the 2022 Caine Prize.