Gasping for Breath: Black crime fiction
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 Kalu 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, 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 work is One Drop, a dystopian, alternative-world novel.