Prof. Kithaka Wa Mberia
Prof. Kithaka Wa Mberia is a poet and playwright. He writes in Kiswahili, Africa’s largest indigenous language. Prof. Mberia, is also an academic who holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree in linguistics. He has attended many conferences, symposia and colloquia and has published numerous academic papers in peer-refereed journals.
Prof. Wa Mberia’s poetry is mainly inspired by political and economic realities in his continent of Africa. However, he has also written extensively on human rights, gender issues and the environment. His poetry has been nominated for the Jomo Kenyatta Award for Literature in Kenya.
Since 1982, Prof. Kithaka wa Mberia has been teaching and doing research as a Chairman in the Department of Linguistics and Languages at the University of Nairobi. He has also taught in the United States of America as a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at Virginia State University, Petersburg. He has taught students from several foreign universities and university colleges during their semesters in Kenya.
He as published five anthologies of poetry, namely, ‘Mchezo wa Karata’ (A Game of Cards), ‘Bara Jingine’ (Another Continent), ‘Redio na Mwezi’ (The Ra dio and the Moon), ‘Msimu wa Tisa’ (The Ninth Season), and ‘Rangi ya Anga’ (The Colour of the Heavens). Several of these books have been translated and published in English. Prof. wa Mberia has also directed and produced a dramatization of his own poems for university theatres, and directed a play by Alamin Mazrui.
Prof. Mberia works and lives in Nairobi, Kenya, with his wife and two children.
