Binyavanga Wainaina, who passed away in 2019, was a pioneering voice in African literature, an award-winning memoirist, and essayist remembered as one of the greatest chroniclers of contemporary African life.
How to Write about Africa is a posthumous collection which includes Wainaina’s pioneering writing on the African continent, including many of his most critically acclaimed pieces, such as the viral satirical sensation “How to Write About Africa,” originally published in Granta.
Join Achal Prabhala, editor of Binyavanga Wainaina’s How to Write About Africa, and Alexis Okeowo, acclaimed journalist and author, for a conversation celebrating Wainaina’s groundbreaking work and enduring legacy.
About the speakers:
Achal Prabhala is a public health activist, filmmaker and writer based in Bangalore, India. He has written for small literary magazines around the world, including Transition, Bidoun and Chimurenga, and edited collections of Indian writing (The Best of Quest, 2011 and Civil Lines 6, 2012). He is the editor of How to Write About Africa, the first instalment of the collected work of Binyavanga Wainaina, published posthumously after the writer’s death in 2019.
Alexis Okeowo has reported on conflict, human rights, and culture across Africa, as well as from Mexico, Europe, and the American South for the New Yorker and other publications. She is the author of the PEN Award-winning A Moonless, Starless Sky: Ordinary Women and Men Fighting Extremism in Africa. Her next book, about her home state of Alabama, is out in August. Her work has also been anthologized in The Best American Sports Writing and The Best American Travel Writing.
About Binyavanga Wainaina:
Binyavanga Wainaina was the founding editor of Kwani?, a leading African literary magazine. He won the 2002 Caine Prize for African writing, and has written for Vanity Fair, Granta and the New York Times. He passed away in 2019 in Nairobi at the age of 48.
