Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, is an author and world pilgrim (some members of her family prefer to the word ‘vagabond.’) from Nairobi, Kenya, a city with which she has a dysfunctional and schizophrenic relationship. Circa 2002, The muses of literature ambushed her as she was ambling towards gainful corporate employment. In 2003 they seduced her with a delightful prize (Caine Prize for African Writing) for the first story she ever dared to write (Weight of Whispers, Kwani, 2003). She believed in their nebulous promises of a life of creative ease supplemented by access to answers to the questions about the meaning of life, and what it meant to be human. She signed over her destiny to them. That is how she has now ended up toiling pitifully, painfully (but irredeemably addicted) within/at/before the furnace of the imagination, daily lighting incense and offering burnt sacrifices to secure a word, just one word from the (now) perfidious muses. She does have quite a few short stories circumnavigating the globe. She also wrote two novels, Dust (2014) and The Dragonfly Sea (2019), and has embarked on a third with the working title, The Long Decay. She is occasionally lured by institutions to offer a ‘cat among the pigeons’ lecture on one elevated theme or another. A few time, immediately after her lecture, she has had to be spirited out of the country. Her parents sold their bodies, hearts and souls to secure a very, very good education for her and her siblings. For this she is eternally grateful. Her parents had hoped she would be the owner of a Fortune 500 company by the time she turned thirty, having paid Fortune 500 company take-over prices to raise her. They are fully supportive of her diversionary path. However, hope does spring eternal among them.
