Moraa Gitaa

Moraa Gitaa is a Kenyan novelist living in Nairobi. She is the author of the novel Crucible for Silver & Furnace for Gold. Gitaa was nominated for the 2014 Burt Award for African Literature and 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.) She is a member of PEN International, the World Association of Writers. Gitaa is Deputy President of PEN International's Kenya Chapter and is the Coordinator of PEN African Network, a pan-African grouping of writers consisting of members of regional PEN International centres.

Gitaa's first full-length novel, Crucible for Silver and Furnace for Gold centers on two characters: Lavina, an African woman living with HIV, and Giorgio, an Italian man whom Lavina meets on vacation. Gitaa's second novel is Shifting Sands. Gitaa is working on a crime fiction novella, Indecent Proposal, a teen novella titled Shark Attack! and a motivational book, The Deepest Cut.^]

Crucible for Silver and Furnace for Gold has been described by reviewers as a re-reading and re-writing of gender in times of HIV. Her work on Shifting Sands received a positive review from Khainga O' Okwemba of Nairobi's Star newspaper. Her stories focus on vulnerable and typically marginalized members of contemporary African society, such as those afflicted with HIV.

She has been featured in anthologies including Author-Me Author Africa Anthology (2011), Author-Me Author Africa Anthology (2008), and G21 The World's Magazine – Africa Fresh! New Voices from the First Continent (2007).

She has published a number of short stories that include "Searching Me", "Katsanga Kenye", "The Devil is in the Detail", "To Serenity via Perdition", "Diplomatic Impunity", "Obscure Oddities", "From Shifting Sands to Deeper Dimensions".