The Cape Cod Bicycle War: Billy Kahora in Conversation with Ellah Wakatama Allfrey
Friday 28 June, Foyles, SU21 Brigstowe St, Bristol BS1 3BH
19:30 – 20:30
£4
Exploring tensions and transitions of lives in-between youthful folly and precarious adulthoods, Kenyan writer Billy Kahora celebrates and reflects on the launch of his anticipated collection of short stories The Cape Cod Bicycle War with Ellah Wakatama Allfrey.
Described by Namwali Serpell as ‘a wondrous collection’ which immerses us in ‘a millenial Kenya we’ve never seen in fiction before, this collection of eleven short stories brings together stories that have already received critical acclaim, including The Gorilla’s Apprentice (shortlisted for The Caine Prize for African Writing in 2012) with previously unpublished stories set across Kenya, South Africa and the US.
Billy Kahora’s short fiction and creative non-fiction has appeared in Chimurenga, McSweeney’s, Granta Online, Internazionale and Vanity Fair and Kwani. He has written a non-fiction novella titled The True Story Of David Munyakei, the screenplay for Soul Boy and co-wrote Nairobi Half Life which won the Kalasha awards. He worked for nearly a decade for Kenya’s leading literary publisher Kwani Trust, editing seven issues of the Kwani? journal. He is currently a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Bristol and pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing at University of Manchester.
Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, OBE, Publishing Director of The Indigo Press, is a former deputy editor at Granta magazine and former senior editor at Jonathan Cape, Random House. She has a served as a judge on a number of prestigious literary prizes including the Man Booker, Dublin International Literary Award, Commonwealth Short Story Prize and The David Cohen Prize. She currently sits on the Advisory Council of Art for Amnesty and the advisory board of the Johannesburg Review of Books. She is Chair of the Caine Prize for African Writing and a trustee of the Jalada Collective (Kenya) and The Royal Literary Fund.
