Moraa Gitaa – Author of Crucible for Silver and Furnace for gold at the SHFK
July 29th, 2009 | Published in Features, Storymoja Hay Festival 2009
Moraa Gitaa was born, bred and raised in the port city of Mombasa. She has lived and worked in the coastal beach town all her life and only 2 years ago moved to Nairobi where she is a full-time writer and is working on plans to initiate a day care centre that is also a Dyslexia Evaluation Accredited centre that will help children challenged by dyslexia, a condition that had challenged her 14 year-old daughter in her first four years of primary school.
Moraa was until recently, the Kenya staff writer for G21-The World’s Magazine for 4 years and is currently a correspondent for the American publications Mshale and African Magazine. She has penned a couple of book reviews for the Sunday Nation. She attended the Aga Khan group of schools in Mombasa and studied Administration and IT at the Coast College of Commerce. Moraa says of herself that she writes for the love of words and is pro-women and pro-children and is thus not apologetic about what she reads and writes! She cites her greatest inspiration as her daughter Tracy and the Kenyan-African woman who struggles daily to ensure she provides for her family. Moraa is also a member of Pen International-Kenya Chapter.
WRITINGS:
‘CRUCIBLE FOR SILVER AND FURNACE FOR GOLD’ is her debut novel published in Canada by Nsemia Publishers (Sept 2008) – Genre adult fiction; Tackles socioeconomic issues like HIV-Aids, historical land alienation issues in coastal Kenya and negative ethnicity vis-a-vis multi-racial relationships. .
Her next full length novels titled ‘Devil in the Detail’ that tackles terrorism and ‘Shifting Sands’ about the coming of-age of a young lady and her struggles with life, will be released January 2010.
She has a Crime fiction novella due to be published by Storymoja in late 2009 titled ‘INDECENT PROPOSAL’ and an inspirational text ‘DEAR DIARY’ that is due to also be published by Storymoja.
Several short stories published in various anthologies including G21’s ‘Africa Fresh!–New voices from the first continent’ (2007), story titled; ‘To Serenity via Perdition’ and Author-Me’s Author Africa–2008 Anthology, stories titled ‘The Devil is in the Detail’ and ‘From Shifting Sands to Deeper Dimensions.’ All submitted for the Caine Prize for African writing.
In 2006-2007 with 11 other screen-writers she co-authored and created a concept in the form of a new TV crime detective series titled; ‘CID Nairobi’ but are yet to get funding for the 13 series shoot. Moraa is currently working on a teenage novella on drug abuse based in Mombasa titled ‘Shark Attack!’
AWARDS:
1ST Prize Adult Fiction Category, NBDC-K (National Book Development Council of Kenya) Literary Awards Book Week at the 11th Nairobi International Book Fair September 2008. An excerpt chapter titled ‘From Shifting Sands to Deeper Dimensions’ from upcoming novel ‘Shifting Sands.’
Moraa will be at the Storymoja Hay Festival Session below.
Friday 31st August 2009, at 12pm – 1:30pm CRIME AND PASSION IN FICTION w/ Tony Kan, Chika Unigwe, Moraa Gitaa, Onduko Bwa’Atebe and Lee Siegel, moderated by Doreen Baingana at the British Council Pavilion
Fiction leads us into usually unfamiliar worlds that both repel and thrill us. This conversation brings together writers who explore the dangerous side of human nature: the lives of prostitutes (Nigerian award winning writer Chika Unigwe), criminals (Kenyan writers Onduko Bwa’Atebe and Moraa Gitaa, American writer Lee Siegel and Nigerian writer Tony Kan).
