It is exactly one year since the legendary Binyavanga Wainaina passed on at the age of 48. In sharing this collection of quotes from tributes to him and pictures of him with individuals from the African literary scene, we remember him here not just as an author, but also as a figure whose life and […]
Tag Archives: Binyavanga Wainaina
Chimamanda Adichie Loves to Read in Bed + 8 Other Things We Learned from Her Recent NYT Interview
Chimamanda Adichie was recently featured on New York Times’ “By the Book,” an interview series that explores the intimate lives of authors as readers. The questions asked tend to be revealing, which is how we know that Adichie loves to read in bed and that one of her favorite villains is Lady Macbeth. Here are […]
The Struggle for Kwani?’s Soul | Isaac Otidi Amuke
During a June 2019 Heinrich Böll Stiftung memorial event in Berlin, the novelist Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor delivered a moving tribute to Binyavanga Wainaina, who died in Nairobi on 21 May 2019, aged 48. Owuor, whose Binyavanga-edited and Kwani?-published short story “Weight of Whispers” won the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2003—the year after Binyavanga’s […]
“He was the most generous writer of his generation”: Pwaangulongii Dauod on Binyavanga’s Passion & Love
The great Binyavanga Wainaina passed on in May 2019 at the age of 48. He may have left behind just one book, the 2011 memoir One Day I Will Write About This Place, but he also left a giant intellectual and communal legacy. In a new nonfiction piece for Granta, the Nigerian writer Pwaangulongii Dauod, […]
Isaac Otidi Amuke Shares Story of Tender Friendship with the Late Great Binyavanga Wainaina
At the end of last year, the Kenyan writer Isaac Otidi Amuke published a piece on his friendship with the late Binyavanga Wainaina, who passed on in May 2019 at 48. Entitled “Knowing Binyavanga” and released on The Elephant, it reveals details of the great writer’s last ten years, from his time as Director of […]
Binyavanga the Unconventional | Norbert Odero
I did not first experience Binyavanga the way I had wished to. I did so like a thief. I was fascinated by both his writing and his social media persona. Unconventional. His points were always distracted by more points. Sometimes he came back to the original idea. Sometimes he did not. Disappearing in a fuzzy […]
Binyavanga, Briefly | Oris Aigbokhaevbolo
THERE ARE A number of things I have said frequently: —“Discovering Home” is the best-written short story to win the Caine Prize. —Why didn’t Nigerian writers care about prose the way Binyavanga did? —If established Nigerian writers behaved with younger writers the way Binyavanga did, our problems would be significantly reduced. I might have told […]
EVENT | Jalada 07: After+Life Anthology Launch & Binyavanga Memorial at McMillan Memorial Library, Nairobi
Jalada Africa will be launching its newest anthology, Jalada 07: After+Life, on Friday, 31 May, at Mc Millan Memorial Library, Nairobi. Jalada 07: After+Life is “a series of reflections that bear fresh and insightful literary takes on the question of life after death,” and features “poetic dirges, new myths and short stories by writers based […]
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