New Voices - announcing Billy Kahora

Today Granta relaunches its project ‘New Voices’, in which we publish short fiction by exciting new writers; we will now be publishing an exclusive short story online six times a year. It is our chance to give these writers some of the recognition we feel they deserve, and to publish a few more of the many stories we receive - extending the space available in our print edition.

We are delighted to announce that our New Voice for February is Billy Kahora, whose story ‘The Gorilla’s Apprentice’ will go online tomorrow.

About Billy Kahora

Billy Kahora studied Creative Writing as a Chevening Scholar at the University of Edinburgh in 2007. Before that, he spent eight years studying and working in South Africa, and was Editorial Assistant for All Africa.com in Washington D.C. He also has degrees in journalism and media studies.

Kahora now lives and works in Kenya, where he is Managing Editor of the literary journal Kwani, established in Nairobi in 2003. He has called the publication ‘non-academic and non-institutionalised’. The writers and editors come from backgrounds of fiction and social commentary – and rather than coming from an already-established group, such as a university, want to create their own literary community.

Billy also edited ‘Kenya Burning’, a visual narrative of the post-election crisis in Kenya, published by the GoDown Arts Centre and Kwani Trust in March 2009. He is now collaborating on a book of non-fiction on environmental corruption in Kenya.

In an editorial for Kwani in 2005, entitled ‘The Fire Next Time OR A Half-Made Place: Between Tetra Paks and Plastic Bags’, Billy wrote:

‘All I might ask, starting with myself, is that my rhetoric, my theories, my musings – at least if I call myself a writer – can be seen between the pages of a book. That I am part of the defining texts of the here and now, and that they are written down and not just talked about. Because we really need them, as much as we need many other things, if we are to avoid, faint hope, the fire next time. And if we can’t avoid it – the moment has been defined for all to see.’

Interview

Granta’s Online Editor Ollie Brock spoke to Billy about his story ‘The Gorilla’s Apprentice’, his online journal Kwani, and the current state of literature in Africa. Read the interview here.