Kwani? is arguably Africa's most exciting and varied literary initiative of recent years. Describing itself as ?a magazine of ideas, [that] seeks to entertain, provoke and create?, Kwani? commissions and publishes stories, poetry, art and photography ?from all around the African continent and the diaspora'. Rejecting artificial divisions of high and low art and literary snobbery, it is dedicated to the flourishing of literature in Kenya and the of African cultural values. Kwami? 01 is widely available outside Africa for the first time. The volume features the writings of numerous prize-winners. It includes the short story, ?The Weight of Whispers?, by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, which won The Caine Prize for African Writing in 2003. Yvonne Owuor is also a screenplay writer, and Executive Director of the Zanzibar International Film Festival. Other contributions are from Parsilelo Kantai, who was short-listed for the Caine Prize in 2004;drawings from Gaddo, one of East Africa's foremost political cartoonists; photographs from the photo-journalist Marion Kaplan; and interviews with ?ghetto youths? conducted by the editor.

Proposing the novel concept of the "literary NGO," this study combines interviews with contemporary East African writers with an analysis of their professional activities and the cultural funding sector to make an original contribution to African literary criticism and cultural studies.

From the critical and commercial success of Kwani? 01 came the next edition, kwani? 02, in 2004. This edition features contemporary literary Kenyan concerns themed on the question of identity. Building on the first issue, kwani? 02 offers all that kwani? 01 did and mirrors the post-millennial angst of young Kenyan writers, poets, cartoonists and photographers. Once again, kwani? featured in the Caine Prize for African writing 2004 when Parselelo Kantaiís Comrade Lemma and the Black Jerusalem Boys Bandwas runner up. Uwem Akpanís An Xmas Feast has since been re-worked and published in the New Yorker magazine ñ the first time an African writer has been featured in that prestigious magazine.

This Kwani-ni? edition tells a street-to-canvas bildunsroman of one of Kenya's most successful artists, inspired by a great love of his life. Richard Onyango tells his coming of age story; from his beginnings as a musical apprentice at the Coast, to lover of Drossie, to his emergence as a force in the international art world.

In April 1992, David Sadera Munyakei, a newly employed clerk at the Central Bank of Kenya started noticing irregularities in the export compensation claims he was processing. On July 31st 2006, Kenya's biggest whistleblower passed away in rural obscurity, 14 years after exposing the Goldenberg scandal, Kenya's biggest economic scandal to date, estimated at over USD 1 billion. Billy Kahora recounts his story.

In this story, Seth Karanja, Madam's professional driver, is having an extremely bad day. Tribe has risen against tribe and his niece, Wacera, has fallen pregnant. To do Madam's bidding, move from place to place and think calmly of a solution to his niece's pregnancy, Seth has to watch out for the machetes on the street. Wambui Mwangi revisits a Nairobi under siege after the 2007 elections, and presents a day in the life of this character as Kenya burns.

Mzee Ondego, Kenya's greatest choirmaster and Kenyatta confidante tells the story of his relationship with Kenya's founding father. Unknown as the man behind one of Kenya's most influential songs - the haunting dirge that played on during those fateful days after the death of Kenya's first president, Mzee Ondego remembers a time that has become part of Kenya's living memory.