Moraa Gitaa | |
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| Born | Mombasa, Kenya |
| Nationality | Kenyan |
| Alma mater | Africa Nazarene University, Nairobi - BA in Peace and Conflict Studies |
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.
Gitaa's debut full-length adult fiction novel, Crucible for Silver and Furnace for Gold, centres on two characters: Lavina, a Kenyan African woman living with HIV, and Giorgio, an Italian man whom Lavina meets on vacation in Malindi on Kenya's coast. [1] Gitaa's sophomore novel is Shifting Sands. [2]
Crucible for Silver and Furnace for Gold has been critiqued by scholars as a re-reading and re-writing of gender in times of HIV. [3] Her work on Shifting Sands received a positive review in the Nairobi Star from Khainga O' Okwemba, who said: "Here is a writer with the patience, perseverance and discipline needed to create vivid characters. Here is a contemporary Kenyan writer capable of bedazzling and cajoling the reader with a skillfully written and scintillating narrative.... Shifting Sands is a must read for literature students." [4] Gitaa's stories focus on the vulnerable, underserved, marginal and marginalized members of contemporary African society. [5]
Gitaa's non-fiction and short stories have been featured in Harvard University's Transition Magazine , [6] PEN International's PEN OutWrite,, [7] IFLAC'S Peace & Anti-Terror Anthology, Spotlight Publisher's Waiting and Other Stories, Creatives Garage Anthology, several Author Me Anthologies, several G21 The World's Magazine Anthologies including Africa Fresh! New Voices from the First Continent, The African Magazine, and Hekaya Initiative [8]
In 2014, James Murua included Gitaa in a list of 39 top African novelists under the age of 40 writing in English. [9]
Pauline Melville FRSL is an English-Guyanese writer and former actress of mixed European and Amerindian ancestry, who is currently based in London, England. Among awards she has received for her writing – which encompasses short stories, novels and essays – are the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Award, and the Guyana Prize for Literature. Salman Rushdie has said of Melville: "I believe her to be one of the few genuinely original writers to emerge in recent years."
Amatoritsero "Godwin" Ede is a Nigerian-Canadian poet. He had written under the name "Godwin Ede" but he stopped bearing his Christian first name as a way to protest the xenophobia and racism he noted in Germany, a "Christian" country, and to an extent, to protest Western colonialism in general. Ede has lived in Canada since 2002, sponsored as a writer-in-exile by PEN Canada. He was a Hindu Monk with the Hare Krishna Movement, and has worked as a Book Editor with a major Nigerian trade publisher, Spectrum Books.
Andrés Neuman is an Argentine writer, poet, translator, columnist and blogger.
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.
Ellen Banda-Aaku is a Zambian author, radio drama and film producer who was born in the UK and grew up in Africa. She is the author of two novels and several books for children, and has had short stories published in anthologies and other outlets.
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.
Beatrice Lamwaka is a Ugandan writer. She was shortlisted for the 2011 Caine Prize for her story "Butterfly Dreams".
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.
Wangui wa Goro is a Kenyan academic, social critic, researcher, translator and writer based in the UK. As a public intellectual she has an interest in the development of African languages and literatures, as well as being consistently involved with the promotion of literary translation internationally, regularly speaking and writing on the subject. Professor Wangui wa Goro is a writer, translator, translation studies scholar and pioneer who has lived and lectured in different parts of the world including the UK, USA, Germany and South Africa.
CarolAnn "C. A." Davids is a South African writer and editor who is best known for her novels The Blacks of Cape Town, (2013), How To Be A Revolutionary, (2022) and her short stories.
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".
Margaret Yvonne Busby,, Hon. FRSL, also known as Nana Akua Ackon, is a Ghanaian-born publisher, editor, writer and broadcaster, resident in the UK. She was Britain's youngest and first black female book publisher when she and Clive Allison (1944–2011) co-founded the London-based publishing house Allison and Busby in the 1960s. She edited the anthology Daughters of Africa (1992), and its 2019 follow-up New Daughters of Africa. She is a recipient of the Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature. In 2020 she was voted one of the "100 Great Black Britons". In 2021, she was honoured with the London Book Fair Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2023, Busby was named as president of English PEN.
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.
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.
Saraba is a nonprofit literary magazine published by the Saraba Literary Trust in Nigeria. First published in February 2009, it aims "to create unending voices by publishing the finest emerging writers, with focus on writers from Nigeria, and other parts of Africa". It has become one of the most successful literary magazines in and out of Africa.
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Gloria Mwaniga is a Kenyan writer, educator and columnist for the Daily Nation and The EastAfrican. She is a graduate of the University of Nairobi and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Writing Workshop in Nigeria. In 2019, she was awarded a Miles Morland Writing Scholarship, and in 2022 her story "Boyi" was awarded the inaugural African Land Policy Centre Story Prize. Her story was subsequently included in Finding Ground and other stories: ALPC Anthology of short stories on Land in Africa. Her work has appeared in The Johannesburg Review of Books and The White Review.
Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki is a Nigerian speculative fiction writer, editor and publisher who is the first African-born Black author to win a Nebula Award. He's also received a World Fantasy Award, British Fantasy Award, Otherwise Award, and two Nommo Awards along with being a multi-time finalist for a number of other honors including the Hugo Award.
Chinelo Onwualu is a Nigerian editor and a speculative fiction writer. She is the co-founder and previous editor-in-chief of Omenana Magazine. She is also co-editor at Anathema Magazine.
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