Mukoma Wa Ngugi

Novelist, poet, and literary scholar, Mukoma Wa Ngugi is the author of Nairobi Heat (Penguin, SA 2009, Melville House Publishing, 2011), an anthology of poetry titled Hurling Words at Consciousness(AWP, 2006) and is a political columnist for the BBC Focus on Africa Magazine. He was shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2009. In 2010, he was shortlisted for the Penguin Prize for African Writing for his novel manuscript, The First and Second Books of Transition. Mukoma holds a PHD in English from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, an MA in Creative Writing from Boston University and a BA in English and Political Science from Albright College. He will be joining Cornell University in the fall of 2012 as an Assistant Professor of English specializing in twentieth-century Anglophone African literature. Nairobi Heat the movie, screenplay by David Abramowitz and directed by Oz Scott, is forthcoming. Finding Sahara, the sequel to Nairobi Heat is going to be published by Melville Publishing House (North America), Kwela Books (Southern Africa), Cassava Republic Press (Western Africa) and East African Educational Publishers (Eastern Africa) in the Spring of 2013. A former co-editor ofPambazuka News, his columns have appeared in the Guardian,International Herald Tribune, Chimurenga, Los Angeles Times, South African Labour Bulletin, and Business Daily Africa, and he has been a guest on Democracy Now, Al Jazeera and the BBC World Service. His essays have appeared in World Literature Review, Black Commentator, Progressive Magazine and Radical History Review. His short stories have been published in Wasafiri, African Writing, Kenyon Review and St. Petersburg Review and his poems in the New York Quarterly, Mythium, Brick Magazine, Kwani?, and Tin House Magazine amongst other places. Mukoma was born in 1971 in Evanston, Illinois and grew up in Kenya before returning to the United States for his undergraduate and graduate education. He is currently based in Norwalk, CT. He is the son of world renowned African writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o.