Kearoma Mosata was announced the winner of the Poetavango Award for Short Fiction 2019 in Maun, Botswana on December 30, 2019. The Poetavango Award for Short Fiction is an annual literary contest organised and run by the Poetavango Collective in Maun, Botswana. It is part of the Maun International Arts Festival 2019 sponsored by, among […]
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o was awarded the Catalonia International Prize given by the Catalan government on December 20, 2019. The Catalonia International Prize is given annually, since it was founded in 1989, to those who have contributed to developing cultural, scientific and human values around the world through their creative work. Previous winners of this prize […]
Joe Khamisi’s latest book The Bribery Syndrome: How Multinational Corporations Collude with Dictators to Raid Africa’s Natural Resources was published on Amazon on December 12, 2019. Joe Khamisi with many years as broadcaster and Member of Parliament isn’t a new name for many Kenyans. Khamisi, who took to writing books in the latter part of […]
There are nine Africans from five countries on the longlist for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction 2020 announced on December 17, 2019. The International Prize for Arabic Fiction, given to a novel in Arabic that judges consider to be the best of that year, is considered to be the most prestigious and important literary […]
The shortlist for the Poetavango Award for Short Fiction 2019 was announced in Maun, Botswana on December 16, 2019. The Poetavango Award for Short Fiction is an annual literary contest organised and run by the Poetavango Collective in Maun, Botswana. The Prize focuses only on the short story form. It is part of the Maun […]
Vivian Onyekachi Ibe was announced the winner of the Quramo Writers’ Prize 2019 for her manuscript What Dreams are Made of in Lagos, Nigeria on December 15, 2019. The Quramo Writers’ Prize is an award celebrating unpublished writers who are working every day to hone their craft and record the continent’s original stories. Founded in […]
The Bodies Anthology, the tenth from the Nairobi-based Pan African collective Jalada Africa, launched at the Kioko Mwitiki Gallery, Nairobi on Friday, December 13, 2019. Pan African writers’ collective and publisher Jalada was born in 2014 when writers from across the continent converged for a literary do in Nairobi. Since then the collective has gone […]
The shortlist for the Mabati Cornell Kiswahili Prize for African Literature 2019 was announced by its board chair, Abdilatif Abdalla, on December 15, 2019. The Mabati Cornell Kiswahili Prize for African Literature recognises writing in African languages and encourages translation from, between and into African languages. The award, founded by Dr Mukoma Wa Ngugi (Cornell […]
Kenyan author Henry Ole Kulet was awarded the Elder of the Burning Spear: Second Class at this year’s Independence Day celebrations on December 12, 2019. Since December 12, 1963, the Republic of Kenya annually celebrates its Independence Day from its colonial rulers the British. As anyone who knows any Kiswahili will know, the word for […]
Married couple Gabriel Dinda and Verah Omwocha Dinda launched Questions of My Youth and Diary of the Mahia at the Mbogi Ya Mawriters series at the Alliance Francaise Nairobi on December 7, 2019. Mbogi Ya Mawriters is a new series for writers hosted at the Alliance Francaise Nairobi. Mbogi is a Kiswahili word meaning railway […]
Poet Mufasa was the featured artist at the Books and Wine series at the Ki.chen, Senteu Plaza, Nairobi on December 6, 2019. Books and Wine Kenya is a Nairobi-based community of book and wine lovers who meet regularly to explore and discover some of the best wine and books from around the world. The series […]
Chibundu Onuzo’s debut novel The Spider King Daughter is now available in Italian as La figlia del Re Ragno. Chibundu Onuzo, who started writing at 17, is the youngest woman to be offered a two-book deal by Faber at 19. Her debut novel The Spider King’s Daughter (2012) came with the following blurb; “The Spider […]
Jennie Marima’s award-winning children’s book Trio Troubles launched at the Mbogi Ya Mawriters series at the Alliance Francaise, Nairobi on December 5, 2019. The event, moderated by Mwangi Kiara, also had Maryan Noor as a panellist. On September 28, the best in Kenyan writing for adults, young adults, and children were announced at the Text […]
Fadimatou Bello, Fritz Bell, and Albert Thierry Nkili Abu are the three finalists for Prix Kon Nnanga 2019 announced on October 14, 2019. Jean-Louis Njemba Medu was a Cameroonian writer considered a pioneer of the African novel. His first was the science fiction/fantasy novel Nnanga Kon in his native Bulu language in 1932. The story […]
The Old Lion of Africa, the autobiography of Dr Walter Nyamori Masiga, was published on November 7, 2019. It is currently available at all good bookstores. One of the most vibrant aspects of Kenyan writing has to be the production of the autobiographies as those who have lived longer share their experiences with those who […]
