Moraa Gitaa

Moraa Gitaa is a Kenyan novelist, Peace Studies and Conflict Management researcher, cultural
advocate and arts curator. She is the author of the YA novels Let’s Talk About This, The Kigango Oracle, "Hila" and "The Shark Attack" among other works. Moraa was a 2017 apexart Fellow. Moraa was one of the Kenya Chapter winners of the 2014 Burt Award for African Literature and shortlisted for the 2010 Penguin Prize for African Writing and also won First Prize in the National Book Development Council of Kenya (NBDCK) Adult Fiction literary award in 2008 (Kenya's National Book Week Literary Award.) 
Career.
Moraa Gitaa works and writes at intersections of gender, social justice, arts for positive social change, feminist politics, sustainable livelihoods and social enterprise. She has worked for more than 15 years with various organizations among them the British Council, Aga Khan Foundation and PEN Kenya Centre across a broad spectrum 
Moraa Gitaa's debut full-length Adult Fiction novel, "Crucible for Silver and Furnace for Gold", centres on two characters: Lavina, a Kenyan African woman living with HIV, and Giorgio, an Italian man whom Lavina meets on vacation in Malindi on Kenya’s coast. Moraa's sophomore novel is "Shifting Sands". 
"Crucible for Silver and Furnace for Gold" has been critiqued by scholars as a re-reading and re-writing of gender in times of HIV. Her work on "Shifting Sands" received a positive review in the "Nairobi Star" from Khainga O' Okwemba, who said: "Here is a writer with the patience, perseverance and discipline needed to create vivid characters. Here is a contemporary Kenyan writer capable of bedazzling and cajoling the reader with a skillfully written and scintillating narrative... Shifting Sands is a must read for literature students." Gitaa's stories focus on the vulnerable, underserved, marginal and marginalized
members of contemporary African society.
Moraa’s non-fiction and short stories have been featured in: "Harvard University’s Transition Magazine", "PEN International’s PEN OutWrite,", IFLAC’S Peace & Anti-Terror Anthology, Spotlight Publisher’s Waiting and Other Stories, Creatives
Garage Anthology, several Author Me Anthologies, several G21 The World’s Magazine Anthologies including ‘Africa Fresh! New Voices from the First Continent’, The African Magazine, and "Hekaya Initiative"
In 2014 "James Murua's Literary Blog" included Moraa in a list of 39 top African novelists under the age of 40 writing in English 