Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye is an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

/Kenya

Kenya

Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...

n novelist, essayist and poet.

Biography

Macgoye was born in 1928 in Southampton

Southampton

Southampton is the largest city in the county of Hampshire on the south coast of England, and is situated south-west of London and north-west of Portsmouth. Southampton is a major port and the closest city to the New Forest...

, England. She moved to Kenya in 1954 and married a Kenyan man in 1960. In 1971 an anthology entitled Poems from East Africa which included the acclaimed poem "A Freedom Song". Her 1986 novel Coming to Birth won the Sinclair Prize and has been used as a set book in Kenyan high schools. She has been called the "mother of Kenyan literature".

Works

• 1972: Murder in Majengo
• 1977: Song of Nyarloka and Other Poems
• 1986: Coming to Birth
• 1987: Street Life
• 1987: The Present Moment
• 1994: Homing In
• 1997: Chira
• 2005: A Farm Called Kishinev (winner: Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature
  Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature
  Jomo Kenyatta Prize for Literature is a literary award given by the Kenya Publishers' Association. The first award was in 1974, however due to financial constraints it was unable to continue...
  
  )