WritingAfrica.com started on April 24, 2013, when its founder James Murua registered the blog JamesMurua.com to give visibility to African writers rarely covered by mainstream African media. Since its founding, he covered literary news from a distinctly Africa-centric lens. That meant reportage on book news, launches, literary festivals, author profiles, and more. With minimal support, he travelled to festivals in East, West, and Southern Africa, even crossing oceans, to give subscribers information about what is happening in African letters.
With thousands of posts on the blog, the project quietly grew to become the biggest blog on African literature on the internet. From a website that focused only on African writers who come from the continent, there was a shift in 2020 to expand the reach of those who were featured. Alongside the shift, there were new components included like a podcast to hear the voices of African writers and a YouTube channel featuring African writers in their element at events virtual and physical.
In 2023, ten years after the leap, there was a change to the new name of Writing Africa from the previous setup, read here why this happened. The new initiative is the same old initiative with news from across literary communities on the continent and the diaspora. It will be a bit better with the experience gained over a decade of doing the same thing.
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P.P.S. We aren’t the only ones covering African literature, this is a handy link to some of the better ones.
James Murua
Nairobi, Kenya-based James Murua is a blogger, journalist, and podcaster who has written for a variety of media outlets in a career spanning print and web. He has been nominated for “Best Creative Writing Blog” for the 2018 Bloggers Association of Kenya Awards. He was also announced as Best Writer “Theatre, Art and Culture” at Kenya’s Sanaa Theatre Awards and listed as one of the top men in digital in Kenya in 2018.
James Murua has conducted workshops on blogging and social media in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria, and Malawi and has been a media consultant for the Goethe Institut, Nairobi.
He was an editor for The Star newspaper in Kenya for five years and a columnist for nine where he was voted “Columnist of the Year” in 2009. He has also been a contributor to Management Magazine (Kenya), The Daily Nation (Kenya), The Nairobian (Kenya), DigifyAfrica.com (South Africa), Johannesburg Review of Books (South Africa), and Africa Independent (South Africa).
His online space WritingAfrica.com, which focuses on literary news and reviews was created in 2013 and is the number one blog on African literature today.