KWANI?

For many years we were made to believe that East Africa was a literary desert. Taban lo Liyong said it and regional publishers vindicated him. And they kept him vindicated for many years but we all knew it was an excuse to invest solely on text books. Text books and study aids to Shakespeare and Nigerian Literature. That is where the money was. Who needed to invest in ‘reading for its own sake’ in a country where the only reading that people did was of ‘what’s the alcohol content in your beer?’ variety?

But wait a minute, Kenyans were reading. Why else were those book vendors on the streets? Are you saying that they were inveterate masochists indulging the sadistic ways of City Council askaris? Of course they were selling books- to Kenyan readers. The bookshops too, they stayed open even when school was out. The readership was there dying for something fresh.

Then Kwani? Happened!

An exciting collection of new writing is what Kwani? offered. And Kenyans loved it. The world too. From Kwani? came two of Kenya’s only Caine Prize for African Writing winners. Back to back. The only Kenyan writers that have made the shortlist too have been closely associated with Kwani? And this year a Kwani? editor got a special mention from the judges.

Kwani?….

All of a sudden, for the first time in two decades, Kenyan writing was being defined not by the achievements of one individual but by a multiplicity of fresh, young voices. Literature was no longer just another KCSE paper- hard, dreary and inaccessible- designed to cast you amongst other failures, school drop-outs and misfits on the sorry side of a conveyor-belt system of education.

And Kwani? continues to broaden the literary space… Kenyans continue to tell their stories in all manner of places. From street corners to the internet.

We Kwani? continue to seek out and publish these stories. In the latest edition of Kwani? we have featured exciting content from several Kenyan bloggers and believe that there are still many more visceral and untrained voices out there waiting to be discovered. Waiting to take their occasional scribbles to the next level. We want to talk to them; work with them because unlike the godfathers of Kenyan publishing- the brokers for printers that they are- we do not see the internet as a threat to that literary desert that they want to perpetuate. After all it is on the internet that our journey began.

Our dead wood version remains in print and on the internet we will take our stories further; tell our tales faster!