Chris Okemwa was announced the winner of this year’s Burt Award 2015 at an invite-only ceremony at the Kempinski Nairobi on Friday night. He won the award which is aimed at literature for young adults for his manuscript titled Sabina and the Ogre.
Okemwa isn’t new to the winning game. He was the 2002 Editor’s Choice Award for Outstanding Achievement in Poetry, presented by the International Library of Poetry, and the 2006 Changamoto Arts Fund award for the performance of his poetry in Secondary Schools in Kenya.
He also has published three collections of poetry: Toxic Love, The Gong. (Nsemia Inc., 2009) and a bilingual (English/French) on-line poetry book, Purgatorius Ignis (Racours Au Poeme, France). Okemwa has a collection of short-stories, Chubot, the Cursed One and Other Stories (2009, Nsemia Inc. Publishers); Riddles of the Abagusii People of Kenya: Gems of Wisdom from the African Continent (Nsemia Inc. 2011); and the oral text, The Proverbs of the Abagusii People of Kenya: Meaning & Application (Nsemia Inc. 2012). His other works include children’s stories: The Village Queen, The Visitor at the Gate, and Let Us Keep Tiger (Paulines Africa). The latter was nominated for Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature in 2011.
Okemwa is an accomplished playwright and performance poet and runs the Kistrech International Poetry Festival.
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