Following and keeping close to the great tradition set by its three predecessors, Kwani? 4 presents a wail of new voices in literary concert with the not so new. The now established talents- Binyavanga Wainaina, Muthoni Garland, Doreen Baingana- share these pages with the fast risers: Billy Kahora, Mukoma wa Ngugi and Shalini Gidoomal. And Kwani? 4 has delved deeper into the all those spaces where the Kenyan story lives: the street corners, the neighbourhood pubs, the in-between semi rural places where the clash of cultures- the traditional versus the modern- continues to redefine the social roles of the individual, dismantle patriarchal constructs and still retain the pithy wit and the devices of ancient orature that time and the ritual of the communal fireside have honed. Still, as though in ridicule of such notions of Africa as being the continent on the lee side of the Digital Divide, Kwani? 4 reaches into the burgeoning realms of the Kenyan blogosphere to bring such politically aware, borderline intellectual and only-two-degrees-shy-of-rebellious voices bringing a fresh look at the old themes of politics, slices of life and religion and placing them alongside such taboo subjects as sex beyond the hetero-normative ideal. Kwani? 4 is established in Africa as the space for cutting-edge new fiction, mind provoking non fiction and photo-essays and witty graphic narratives.

Kwani? is arguably Africa's most exciting and varied literary initiative of recent years. Describing itself as ?a magazine of ideas, [that] seeks to entertain, provoke and create?, Kwani? commissions and publishes stories, poetry, art and photography ?from all around the African continent and the diaspora'. Rejecting artificial divisions of high and low art and literary snobbery, it is dedicated to the flourishing of literature in Kenya and the of African cultural values. Kwami? 01 is widely available outside Africa for the first time. The volume features the writings of numerous prize-winners. It includes the short story, ?The Weight of Whispers?, by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, which won The Caine Prize for African Writing in 2003. Yvonne Owuor is also a screenplay writer, and Executive Director of the Zanzibar International Film Festival. Other contributions are from Parsilelo Kantai, who was short-listed for the Caine Prize in 2004;drawings from Gaddo, one of East Africa's foremost political cartoonists; photographs from the photo-journalist Marion Kaplan; and interviews with ?ghetto youths? conducted by the editor.

From the critical and commercial success of Kwani? 01 came the next edition, kwani? 02, in 2004. This edition features contemporary literary Kenyan concerns themed on the question of identity. Building on the first issue, kwani? 02 offers all that kwani? 01 did and mirrors the post-millennial angst of young Kenyan writers, poets, cartoonists and photographers. Once again, kwani? featured in the Caine Prize for African writing 2004 when Parselelo Kantaiís Comrade Lemma and the Black Jerusalem Boys Bandwas runner up. Uwem Akpanís An Xmas Feast has since been re-worked and published in the New Yorker magazine ñ the first time an African writer has been featured in that prestigious magazine.