Alex Mutua

Alex Mutua is the author of the Kenyan Conversations Story of the Week  Illicit.

He is 26 years old, and a former student at Nairobi Aviation College. He is currently on an extended internship and training at the National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA). He is also a regular contributor in daily papers especially Kenya Today and The Standard. Alex Mutua is interested in writing fiction, poems, plays, commentaries, and feature articles. Alex also writes in Swahili. He loves reading, from magazines to critic books and novels. At the moment he is working on his first novel.

Clifton Anthony Gashagua

Clifton Gashagua is 4th year biomedical student. ‘I spend my time in the laboratory writing poems and prose on notebooks. Every time I start on a story I imagine it as a poem so I often end up writing poems! I know I’ll end up as a microbiologist. I water the flowers at home thrice a day. I cannot wait till they bloom.’ Read his winning story – A Freshly Ground Professor.

Poet, novelist and playwright Benjamin Zephaniah was born on 15 April 1958. He grew up in Jamaica and the Handsworth district of Birmingham, England, leaving school at 14. He moved to London in 1979 and published his first poetry collection, Pen Rhythm, in 1980.

Meet and Talk to Benjamin Zephaniah at the Storymoja Hay Festival 2010

He holds an honorary doctorate in Arts and Humanities from the University of North London (1998), was made a Doctor of Letters by the University of Central England (1999), and a Doctor of the University by the University of Staffordshire (2002). He has recently been awarded further honorary doctorates by London South Bank University, the University of Exeter and the University of Westminster.

Zephaniah’s writing includes  -  The Dread Affair: Collected Poems (1985) which contained a number of poems attacking the British legal system, Poetry for children – Turkeys (1994) and Funky Chickens (1996), Rasta Time in Palestine (1990), an account of a visit to the Palestinian occupied territories, contained poetry and travelogue, and novels for teens  - Face (1999), described by the author as a story of ‘facial discrimination’; Refugee Boy (2001), the story of a young boy, Alem, fleeing the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea; Gangsta Rap (2004); and Teacher’s Dead (2007).

In addition to his published writing, Benjamin Zephaniah has produced numerous music recordings, including Us and Dem (1990) and Belly of de Beast (1996), and has also appeared as an actor in several television and film productions, including appearing as Moses in the film Farendg (1990). His first television play Dread Poets Society, was first screened by the BBC in 1991. His play Hurricane Dub was one of the winners of the BBC Young Playwrights Festival Award in 1998, and his stage plays have been performed at the Riverside Studios in London, at the Hay-on-Wye Literature Festival and on television. His radio play Listen to Your Parents, first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2000, won the Commission for Racial Equality Race in the Media Radio Drama Award and has been adapted for the stage, first performed by Roundabout, Nottingham Playhouse’s Theatre in Education Company, in September 2002.

Prizes and awards that Zephaniah has won

1988   BBC Young Playwrights Festival Award Hurricane Dub

2001   Commission for Racial Equality Race in the Media Radio Drama Award Listen to Your Parents

2002   Portsmouth Book Award (Longer Novel category) Refugee Boy

2005   British Book Awards Decibel Writer of the Year (shortlist)

2006   Manchester Book Award (shortlist)   Gangsta Rap

You will have a chance to meet and talk with Benjamin Zephaniah at the Storymoja Hay Festival 2010.

Find out more about Zephaniah at his website

Mwangi Ichungwa  follows in Naomi Kamau and Clifford Oluoch’s footsteps with his winning Contemporary Nairobi story The Classifieds and excels! Congratulations Mwangi!

Mwangi Ichung’wa writes for the sheer love of it. End of story.

Mwangi Ichungwa

Hook up with his other Stories:

1. They Look like Diamonds.

2. Oh well…

3. The Art of Death.

4. The Meet.

5. Spilt Milk.

6. High Treason.

7. I am Dust.

Naomi Kamau follows in Clifford Oluoch’s footsteps with her winning Contemporary Nairobi story If Who You Are is What You Have…Congratulations Naomi!

Naomi Kamau

Naomi Kamau is a 2nd year Communication student in Daystar University, Nairobi Campus. She believes in people inspite of all that affects them. She enjoys composing poems and stories. She says ‘My journal is my heartbeat, I can’t do without it.’ She has been involved in reciting poems in church from an early age. I have had an opportunity to read two of the Storymoja titles( Crown Your Customer and the Tracking the Scent of my Mother) and I admire the creativity and want to develop it in myself.  Read her winning story below.

Clifford Oluoch sets the bar pretty high for all of us. Which is why you voted his story DESTINY as the Story of the Week. Thank you Clifford for shining the light on excellence!

Clifford C. Oluoch

Clifford Oluoch, a career teacher and a jack of all creative trades, believes in well written and well told stories. Everyday events such as a wobbly handshake, a toothless smile or any ‘normal’ human behaviour inspire him.  His other works include playscripts, children’s novels and Maths text books.

You have a chance to be the next week’s author of the Contemporary Nairobi Story of the Week.

Every author who wins the Story of the Week, will have the opportunity to have their work in expedited review at the Storymoja Editorial Review Table. To win that spot, please send in a story that fits into the categories below.

-         Contemporary Nairobi setting

-         Has two or more young professionals as main characters

-         Can be either Crime/Detective Fiction, Romance or Life Crisis Fiction

-         Must be complete enough to stand as a story by itself

-         Has a running mystery; story must be short but the mystery should make it possible to develop the story into a novella (10000 words)

-         Should not be more than 2000 words

In addition to the expedited review, the winning author will have a Writer Profile on our site, as well as stand a chance to win KES 500 and one of the Storymoja titles.

Trade lawyer impresses critics and readers alike with ‘disarmingly funny’ short stories of Zimbabwe.
Petina Gappah has won the Guardian First Book Award with her short stories on life in Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe. Photograph: Sarah Lee

Trade lawyer impresses critics and readers. Photo by Sarah Lee.

A Geneva-based international trade lawyer whose poignant, humane and funny collection of stories about her home country, Zimbabwe, has impressed critics was tonight named winner of the Guardian First Book Award.

Petina Gappah became only the second short story writer to win the award in its 10-year history, the first being Yiyun Li in 2006. Gappah’s collection of 13 stories, An Elegy for Easterly, tells of the lives of people, rich and poor, caught up in events over which they have little control.

The Guardian’s literary editor, Claire Armitstead, who chaired the judging panel, said she was thrilled to name Gappah as winner, particularly since 2009 is the year of the short story. There had been some wonderful first books, she said, and “Petina Gappah’s humane and disarmingly funny mosaic of life in Zimbabwe is undoubtedly one of the very best.”

The Guardian award is unique in that it gives a vote to the collective voice of reading groups, organised by Waterstone’s at branches in Bath, Oxford, Edinburgh, Leeds and London. The book chain’s Stuart Broom was the readers’ representative on the panel and he said: “There is a quietness, humour and charm to this book that resonated with the Waterstone’s reading groups. Many readers commented on the delicate simplicity of the stories, which belies the fact that a number of the short stories explore very harsh political realities. It’s going to be fascinating to see what Gappah does next as a writer.”

The answer to that is that she is working on her first novel, called The Book of Memory, which Gappah said was about “jealousy and obsession and the triumph of evil over good”.

Gappah said she was bowled over at winning the prize. “When I was told, I think I laughed. It was the last thing I expected. Did you read the books on the shortlist? I mean, seriously good. If I’d been judging the prize I certainly would not have chosen me.”

Gappah has been writing unpublished novels for many years, rather rockily. “I’d start one and not finish it, I lost one when my computer crashed, I had a computer stolen,” she said. “This wasn’t meant to be a collection because everyone kept telling me ‘oh, publishers hate short stories, don’t write them, write a novel’. So I’ve been writing novels but I kept writing the stories in between.

“I’m really happy as well to be only the second short story collection to have won this prize and also the fact the other person is Yiyun Li, one of my household gods. To be spoken of in the same breath is incredible.”

Gappah has been praised for movingly conveying the sheer awfulness of lives being destroyed by the ruined economy and HIV/Aids but also writing of joy and jokes and laughing. The novelist Aminatta Forna, in her Guardian review of the collection, praised Gappah for brilliantly conveying the reality of life in Zimbabwe, adding: “Through humour and compassion, she depicts that most quintessential of African characteristics: the ability to laugh at life, for fear of crying.”

The impressively educated Gappah – law degrees from Cambridge, Graz University and the University of Zimbabwe – lives in Geneva with her six-year-old son. She was given her prize of £10,000 this evening at a ceremony hosted by one of the judges, the BBC broadcaster Martha Kearney. The other judges were the poet and novelist Tobias Hill, the author Nadeem Aslam, the political philosopher John Gray, Broom and Guardian deputy editor Katharine Viner.

The Guardian First Book Award was created in 1999 and is open to all first-time authors writing in English, across all genres.

Gappah won from a shortlist that included a work of non-fiction – Michael Peel’s A Swamp Full of Dollars – and three novels: The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton; The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey; and The Selected Works of TS Spivet by Reif Larsen.
From An Elegy for Easterly
The wedding guests look upon the cracked, pink lips of Rosie’s bridegroom. They look at Rosie’s own lips that owe their reddish pinkness to artifice, they think, and not disease. Can Rosie see what they see, they wonder, that her newly made husband’s sickness screams out its presence from every pore?

Disease flourishes in the slipperiness of his tufted hair, it is alive in the darkening skin, in the whites of the eyes whiter than nature intended, in the violently pink-red lips, the blood beneath fighting to erupt through the broken skin.

He smiles often, Rosie’s bridegroom. He smiles when a drunken aunt entertains the guests with a dance that, oustide this celebration of sanctioned fornication, could be called obscene. He smiles when an uncle based in Manchester, England, calls on the mobile telephone of his son and sends his congratulations across nine thousand kilometres shortened by Vodafone on his end and Econet on the other. His smile broadens as the son tells the master of ceremonies that the uncle pledges two hundred pounds as a wedding gift; the smile becomes broader still when the master of ceremonies announces that the gift is worth two hundred million dollars on Harare’s parallel market. He smiles and smiles and smiles and his smile reveals the heightened colour of his gums.

Extract from a story in Petina Gappah’s collection, An Elegy for Easterly

NIXON MATEULAH

Nixon Mateulah

Nixon was born in Lilongwe, Malawi. He published two successful short stories soon after writing my ‘O’ Levels in 1995. In the same year I enrolled for ‘A’ Levels through the University of London but did not sit for the examinations due to financial problems. Then in 1996 he emigrated to South Africa. While doing odds jobs in Indian shops in 1997 in Pretoria, he enrolled for Journalism and Creative Writing course and obtained Diploma in 2000. Since then he has published short stories, poems in various books, newspapers, as well as online publications.

Nixon is a full member of Poetry Circle of Cape Town that meets every second week of every month at Cape Town Central Library and Storymoja of Kenya. Last year, he attended The New Playwriting Programme workshop at Artscape under Professor Roy Sargeant and  has completed two stage plays and a short screenplay.

Currently, he is rewriting his two unpublished novels and putting stories together for the documentary about immigrants in South Africa. Nixon lives in Grassy Park, Cape Town.

Nixon’s Short Story Tears of a Mother (Published in 4 parts) was voted in as the Story of the Week during the month of October.

SANDRA A. MUSHI

Rhythm of my Rhyme

Sandra Mushi was born in Dar es Salaam, grew up in the UK and was educated in Tanzania, Botswana and South Africa.  She is an interior design architect with a very strong passion for writing.

She is the author of the acclaimed The Rhythmn Of My Rhyme, a collection of soulful poems, which has been received and sold well both in Tanzania and outside Tanzania. Her love for writing, reading, painting and drawing, started at quite a young age.  When Sandra was a toddler, her mother then attending university would give her scraps of papers and crayons – so as to not distract her from her homework and keep her young daughter busy – and this still works to this day, with books.

While Sandra always wrote, drew and painted and as a teenage – whenever time was of abundance, sadly she had to put this passion aside when she started university.  It was in April 2004 when she was on holiday – inspired by nature, the wilderness; Jill Scott, India Arie; Maya Angelou and Iyanla Vanzant – she started writing again.  This time she attempted something she had never tried before; poetry.  Thrilled with what she had written she decided to share it with the world through the world wide web – and as they say “the rest is history.”

Some of Sandra’s works can be seen at www.sandrasden.com and on her blog www.saharasoulfood.wordpress.com.  Sandra has also written columns and articles for Bang magazine, The Citizen and The Express newspapers.

Sandra’s short story  Plate of Ugali was voted Story of the Week during the Month of October

DOMINIC OTIANGA

Dominic Otianga

I’m a Kenyan-born German resident of Freiburg city, a writer of fictions, newspaper articles and real-life stories. Most of my articles have been published in UK, Botswana, Australia and US and can easily be accessed online I’m the author of the recently published novel, United by a strong force of Separation- A crime & detective (Terrorism) and romance fiction set in the USA, Middle East and East Africa in the post August 7th and beyond September 11^th with the message of religious tolerance. I’m currently working towards finishing my second novel about the visible yet ignored and left untold- The story of immigration, integration and bread & butter issues in Germany and some European countries. This is a story based on my observation, experience and research.

Website: www.domnicotianga.com

Dominic’s short story Driving Licence was voted Story of the Week during the Month of October.

Boniface Gachugu, the writer of this week’s story ‘The Ivory Tower’ is an avid young writer. He is published both in Kenya and Nigeria . He was among poets featured in an anthology of African poets entitled “Imagination of Poets” published in Nigeria in 2005. Closer home, he is the writer of a new children’s book titled “Peanut and the Burning Tank” published by storymoja.

Boniface is very passionate about re-introducing the reading culture back to the society. He also would like to see publishers coming up with books that mirror the current social-economic aspects, governance an education in the country. He has written several fiction manuscripts currently with different publishers.