Binyavanga Wainaina

"All that we know of all heartstuffs was invented in Africa. Before a single person ever left this continent.Two men walked across a thousand miles to look for other men. Who loved men."

Binyavanga Wainaina is a Kenyan author, publisher and cultural worker. He is the founding editor of one of Africa’s leading literary institutions, Kwani? (www.kwani.org). His “How to Write About Africa” attracted wide attention globally and his memoir, One Day I Will Write About This Place, has been translated into several languages. In 2007, he was nominated by the World Economic Forum as a "Young Global Leader". He declined the award.

Binyavanga has been a Sterling Brown Fellow at Williams College, Massachusetts, a Lannan Fellow and a Visiting Writer at Union College, New York. Until 2012 he was the Director of the Chinua Achebe Center for African Writers and Artists at Bard College.

For over eleven years Binyavanga has sought, worked with, published, mentored and promoted some of Africa’s most exciting new literary talent. In 2014 he came out publicly as gay and was named by Time magazine as one of 100 most influential people in the world in the same year.

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