In the fall of 2008, he was in residence at Williams College, in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where he was teaching, lecturing and working on a novel. In 2007, Wainaina was a writer-in-residence at Union College in Schenectady, NY (USA). He wrote for The EastAfrican, National Geographic, The Sunday Times (South Africa), Granta, The New York Times, Chimurenga and The Guardian (UK). In 2003, he was given an award by the Kenya Publishers Association for his services to Kenyan literature. 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book." Wainaina summed up the way Western media has reinforced stereotypes and pre-existing ideas of Africa by saying their representation was that: "One must treat Africa as if it were one country. Wainaina's satirical essay "How to Write About Africa", published in Granta magazine in 2005, attracted wide attention. Established in 2003, Kwani? has since become an important source of new writing from Africa Yvonne Owuor also wrote for the magazine and won the Caine Prize in 2003. Wainaina was the founding editor of Kwani?, the literary magazine in East Africa that sprung out of an artistic revolution that started in 2002. In July 2002 he won the Caine Prize for his short story "Discovering Home" (the judges being Ahdaf Soueif, Margaret Busby, Jason Cowley and Abdulrazak Gurnah).
įollowing his education, Wainaina worked in Cape Town for some years as a freelance food and travel writer. Wainaina at the PICNIC festival in 2008, where he was a featured speaker. In January 2014, in response to a wave of anti-gay laws passed in Africa, Wainaina publicly announced that he was gay, first writing an essay that he described as a "lost chapter" of his 2011 memoir entitled "I am a Homosexual, Mum", and then tweeting: "I am, for anybody confused or in doubt, a homosexual. His debut book, a memoir entitled One Day I Will Write About This Place, was published in 2011. He completed an MPhil in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia in 2010. He later studied commerce at the University of Transkei in South Africa, where he went to live in 1991. He attended Moi Primary School in Nakuru, Mangu High School in Thika, and Lenana School in Nairobi. Early life and education īinyavanga Wainaina was born on 18 January 1971 in Nakuru in Rift Valley Province, Kenya. In April 2014, Time magazine included Wainaina in its annual Time 100 as one of the "Most Influential People in the World".
In 2003, he was the founding editor of Kwani? literary magazine. Kenneth Binyavanga Wainaina (18 January 1971 – ) was a Kenyan author, journalist and 2002 winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing. One Day I Will Write About This Place: A Memoir (2011).
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