“First of all I’m writing for myself. It’s that secret place I go to which connects with the writing me that has existed through all these years, and isn’t actually concerned with audience, with getting published, it’s simply a compulsion.”
Peter Kalu is always on the side of our humanity as it is expressed in the multiplicity of life, and his attention to the specific and the particular is strong enough to build houses on.
Time and writing: why I’m always writing three things at once
Peter Kalu explaining what the benefits are for him to be writing in different genres concurrently
Text as fetish
Peter Kalu shares with us his love and regard for his coveted copy of Zami by Audre Lorde
Peter Kalu in conversation with John Siddique
John Siddique meets multi-genre, multi-voiced, writer Peter Kalu to talk about his life long fascination and journey with the power of story.
Biography
Peter Kalu is a Manchester-based short story writer, novelist, storyteller, playwright and poet. His short stories range in style from the realist to the surreal to the carnivalesque and can be found in various anthologies including Closure (Peepal Tree), A Country To Call Home (Unbound) and Seaside Special (Bluemoose). His poetry has been widely published, performed and displayed within the UK. As a storyteller, he has told tales in Nigeria, France, Lebanon and Pakistan. Prizes he has won include a BBC Playwrights Award, the Liverpool Kodak Film Pitch Award, The Voice/Jamaica Information Service Marcus Garvey Scholarship Award and Contact/BBC Dangerous Comedy Prize.
In other lives he has been a law student, a software engineer, a commercial text translator (French to English), a glass collector at the Shoulder of Mutton public house in Leeds, a probation service volunteer and a freelance carol singer. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (membership since lapsed) and was recently awarded a PhD in Creative Writing by Lancaster University. His interests include English country houses, coding possibilities in digital literature and tightrope walking. His latest book is One Drop, a dystopian, alternative-world novel.
