Binyavanga Wainaina, 1971–2019, RIP

Kenyan author and activist Binyavanga Wainaina has died, at the age of forty-eight.

Wainaina passed away at 10 pm on Tuesday night at Aga Khan Hospital in Nairobi after a stroke, a family friend has confirmed to The JRB.

Wainaina was born in Nakuru, Kenya, in 1971, and studied commerce at the University of Transkei in South Africa from 1991. He moved to Cape Town in 1996, where he worked as a travel and food writer and professional cook.

In 2002, he won the Caine Prize for African Writing, for his short story ‘Discovering Home’.

Wainaina was the founding editor of Kwani?, a journal of experimental writing, which he established in 2003, and which became an important and vital source for new African writing. He completed an MPhil in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia in 2010.

In 2012, his satirical essay ‘How to Write About