Featuring:  Juliet Maruru, Moraa Gitaa and +2 Screen Writers from the Kenya Film Commission & Kwani Trust Screen Writing Workshop & Musician Maia von Lekow  

Date:23rd November  2008
Time:7:00pm - 9:00pm
Venue: Kengeles, Lavington Green
Entry Only KSh. 300

ABOUT THE FEATURED WRITERS & MUSICIAN

Moraa Gitaa
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 a year ago moved to Nairobi where she is a fulltime writer and is working on plans to initiate an organization that provides books for disadvantaged children residing in informal settlements and those challenged by dyslexia, a condition that had challenged her daughter.  

She attended the Aga Khan group of schools in Mombasa and studied Administration and IT at the Coast College of Commerce.

'CRUCIBLE FOR SILVER AND FURNACE FOR GOLD' is her debut novel published in Canada. She has a finished crime fiction novella (INDECENT PROPOSAL) and an inspirational text (I DARED TO DREAM) that is due to be published by StoryMoja.    

Until most recently she was the Kenya staff writer for G21 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. Moraa has several short stories published in various anthologies including G21’s Africa Fresh!–New voices from the first continent (2007) and Author-Me’s Author Africa–2008 Anthology,some of which were submitted for the Caine Prize for African writing.  

In 2005-2006 with 11 other screen-writers they 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. She has refused to be the 'SAFE' under 35 year old writer that most traditional local publishers have been looking for! That is why some people refer to her as a rebel writer, unorthodox and unconventional!  

She cites her greatest inspiration as her thirteen year-old daughter Tracy and the Kenyan-African woman who struggles daily to ensure she provides for her family.

Moraa has also submitted her second novel 'THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAIL' to the Canadian publishing firm. She is working on her third novel provisionally titled 'SHIFTING SANDS', of which a chapter excerpt titled ‘From Shifting Sands to Deeper Dimensions’ won the NBDC(K) National Book Development Council of Kenya Literary Awards Book Week 1st Prize in the Adult Fiction Category at the 11th Nairobi International Book Fair September 2008.

Juliet Maruru
Juliet is a 20 something year old writer, a semi-trained kindergarten teacher, a writer and Editorial assistant at Storymoja. Her yet to be finished adventure novel for teens(looks like she has not given up on teens completely), might yet be published some time next year, but you can read her work on www.jmaruru.wordpress.com.

She loves to read, to write, to work with kids. Her motto adopted from a city then off a tolerant lawyer declares that ‘she floats..’ She needs to judging from the umber of times she finds herself in a deep end.

Juliet will be reading her short story, ‘There goes my Career’ which she describes as ‘one more story about surviving in the big wide world, drowning a little bit, then finding my stroke again, and loving it all’