From the earnest hustle of our elders in writing during the 1960s to the contemporary dreams of ubiquitous hustler writers, Billy Kahora* wonders about the place of creative writing programmes. Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s memoir, Birth of a Dream Weaver, describes a unique moment at the 1962 Makerere Conference for Literature that feels straight out of […]
Tag Archives | Billy Kahora
Penpoints, Gunpoints, and Dreams: A history of creative writing instruction in East Africa
The Second German Chronic is Here
The second German-language edition of the Chronic takes up the theme of new cartographies. The 32-page publication features translations of maps and selected writings from previous editions of the English Chronic produced in 2014 and 2015. Contributors include Binyavanga Wainaina, Yemisi Aribisala, Billy Kahora, Jesse Weaver Shipley, Wendell Marsh, Agri Ismail, Moses März, Elnathan John, Stacy Hardy, Sarah Jappie and […]
Authority Stealing in Kenya
In pursuit of some scriptwriter talent, Billy Kahora discovers that academic mantras, conservative world views and hand-me down observations stunt a rendering of the true grit that must be lived to be imagined in a Nairobi noir. The cinema like the detective story, makes it possible to experience without danger all the excitement, passion and […]
How to Eat a Forest
Billy Kahora recounts a journey into Kenya’s Mau Forest, where he confronts the interface between the ideal and the real, the disputed and the disparaged. It is a schizophrenic geography as mapped, as inhabited, and as marketed by the dispossessed, the landless, the landowner and the broker. 1. How to eat a forest Almost everywhere, […]
Buru Buru
Billy Kahora reflects on the state of the ‘estate’ of his Nairobi childhood and finds its decay symptomatic of the malaise of a middle class that’s lost its mind. My younger brother, James, tells me another Buru Buru Phase 5 story when I make my habitual Saturday phone call and ask him what’s happening in the old neighbourhood. My question is […]
The Second German Chronic is Here
The second German-language edition of the Chronic takes up the theme of new cartographies. The 32-page publication features translations of maps and selected writings from previous editions of the English Chronic produced in 2014 and 2015. Contributors include Binyavanga Wainaina, Yemisi Aribisala, Billy Kahora, Jesse Weaver Shipley, Wendell Marsh, Agri Ismail, Moses März, Elnathan John, Stacy Hardy, Sarah Jappie and […]
Authority Stealing in Kenya
In pursuit of some scriptwriter talent, Billy Kahora discovers that academic mantras, conservative world views and hand-me down observations stunt a rendering of the true grit that must be lived to be imagined in a Nairobi noir. The cinema like the detective story, makes it possible to experience without danger all the excitement, passion and […]
How to Eat a Forest
Billy Kahora recounts a journey into Kenya’s Mau Forest, where he confronts the interface between the ideal and the real, the disputed and the disparaged. It is a schizophrenic geography as mapped, as inhabited, and as marketed by the dispossessed, the landless, the landowner and the broker. 1. How to eat a forest Almost everywhere, […]
Buru Buru
Billy Kahora reflects on the state of the ‘estate’ of his Nairobi childhood and finds its decay symptomatic of the malaise of a middle class that’s lost its mind. My younger brother, James, tells me another Buru Buru Phase 5 story when I make my habitual Saturday phone call and ask him what’s happening in the old neighbourhood. My question is […]
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