Peter Kimani

PETER KIMANI is a leading Kenyan journalist and author of, most recently, Dance of the Jakaranda, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. The novel was nominated for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in the US and long-listed for the inaugural Big Book Awards in the UK. He has taught at Amherst College and the University of Houston and is presently based at Aga Khan University’s Graduate School of Media and Communications. Nairobi Noir is his latest work.

If you like author Peter Kimani here is the list of authors you may also like

Buy books on Amazon

Total similar authors (18)

Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He is best known for his 2000 memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which became a bestseller and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Eggers is also the founder of several notable literary and philanthropic ventures, including the literary journal Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, the literacy project 826 Valencia, and the human rights nonprofit Voice of Witness. Additionally, he founded ScholarMatch, a program that connects donors with students needing funds for college tuition. His writing has appeared in numerous prestigious publications, including The New Yorker, Esquire, and The New York Times Magazine.
Buy books on Amazon
Leila Aboulela

Leila Aboulela grew up in Khartoum, Sudan where she attended the Khartoum American School and Sister School. She graduated from Khartoum University in 1985 with a degree in Economics and was awarded her Masters degree in statistics from the London School of Economics. She lived for many years in Aberdeen where she wrote most of her works while looking after her family; she currently lives and lectures in Abu Dhabi.

She was awarded the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2000 for her short story The Museum and her novel The Translator was nominated for the Orange Prize in 2002, and was chosen as a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times in 2006.

Buy books on Amazon
Wangari Maathai

Wangari Maathai was a Kenyan environmental and political activist. She was educated in the United States at Mount St. Scholastica and the University of Pittsburgh, as well as the University of Nairobi in Kenya. In the 1970s, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on the planting of trees, environmental conservation, and women's rights. In 1984, she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award, and in 2004, she became the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for “her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace.” Maathai was an elected member of Parliament and served as Assistant Minister for Environment and Natural Resources in the government of President Mwa
Buy books on Amazon
Binyavanga Wainaina

Binyavanga Wainaina was a short story writer, essayist, and journalist.

He was the founding editor of Kwani?, a leading African literary magazine based in Kenya, and he directed the Chinua Achebe Center for African Writers and Artists at Bard College.

He won the 2002 Caine Prize for African Writing, and wrote for many journals, including Vanity Fair, National Geographic, One Story, Tin House, Virginia Quarterly Review, Harper's, Granta, the Sunday Times, and the New York Times.
Buy books on Amazon
Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah

Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah is a Ghanaian feminist writer and blogger. She co-founded award-winning blog Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women and has written for The Guardian and Open Democracy. Sekyiamah is the Director for Communications manager at the Association for Women's Rights in Development and a member of the Black Feminism Forum Working Group which organised the historic first Black Feminist Forum in Bahia, Brazil.
Buy books on Amazon
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor (born 1968) is a Kenyan writer, who was named "Woman of the Year" by Eve Magazine in Kenya in 2004 for her contribution to the country's literature and arts. She won the 2003 Caine Prize for African Writing for her story "Weight of Whispers", which considers an aristocratic Rwandan refugee in Kenya. The story was originally published in Kwani?, the Kenyan literary magazine set up by Binyavanga Wainaina after he won the Caine Prize the previous year.

Born in Nairobi, Owuor studied English at Jomo Kenyatta University, before taking an MA in TV/Video development at Reading University. She has worked as a screenwriter and was the Executive Director of the Zanzibar International Film Festival from 2003 to 2005. Her short sto
Buy books on Amazon
Okwiri Oduor

Okwiri Oduor (born 1988/1989) is a Kenyan writer, who won the 2014 Caine Prize with her short story "My Father's Head". In April 2014 she was named on the Hay Festival's Africa39 list of 39 Sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define trends in African literature, with her story "Rag Doll" being included in the subsequent anthology edited by Ellah Allfrey, Africa39: New Writing from Africa South of the Sahara.
Buy books on Amazon
Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, a Ugandan novelist and short story writer, has a PhD from Lancaster University. She is a lecturer in Creative Writing at Lancaster University and lives in Manchester with her husband Damian and son Jordan.

Her first novel, Kintu, won the Kwani Manuscript Prize in 2013 and was longlisted for the 2014 Etisalat Prize for Literature. Her story Let's Tell This Story Properly won the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. In 2018 she was awarded a Windham-Campbell Prize in the fiction category. In 2021, her novel The First Woman won the Jhalak Prize.

Makumbi's writing is largely based on oral traditions. She realised that oral traditions were so broad and would be able to frame all her writing regardless of subject, form o
Buy books on Amazon
Chigozie Obioma

Chigozie Obioma was born in Akure, Nigeria. His two novels, The Fishermen (2015) and An Orchestra of Minorities (2019) were shortlisted for The Booker Prize and have been translated into 30 languages. He has an LA Times book prize, the prestigious Internationalerpris, FT/Oppenheimer prize for fiction, an NAACP Image award and has been nominated for two dozen prizes for fiction. He was a judge of the Booker prize in 2021. He is a Distinguished writer in Residence at Wesleyan University, CT, the James E. Ryan Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and the program director of the Oxbelly Writers retreat. His third novel, The Road to the Country, will be published in 2024.
Buy books on Amazon
Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀

Ayobami Adebayo's stories have appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies, and one was highly commended in the 2009 Commonwealth short story competition. She holds BA and MA degrees in Literature in English from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife. She also has an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia where she was awarded an international bursary for Creative Writing. Ayobami has been the recipient of fellowships and residencies from Ledig House, Hedgebrook, Threads, Ebedi Hills and Ox-Bow.
STAY WITH ME- UK (Canongate, March 2017), Nigeria (Ouida Books, April 2017), US (Knopf, August 2017), KENYA (Kwani?, August 2017) is her debut novel.
Buy books on Amazon
Lesley Nneka Arimah

Lesley Nneka Arimah was born in the UK and grew up wherever her father was stationed for work, which was sometimes Nigeria, sometimes not.

Her work has received grants and awards from Commonwealth Writers, AWP, the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Jerome Foundation and others. She currently lives in Minneapolis.
Buy books on Amazon
Jackson Biko

Jackson Biko is a Kenyan writer with the Business Daily, True Love magazine and The Saturday Nation. He also edits Msafiri Magazine, Safaricom Foundation’s Msingi Magazine and a scattering of other writing jobs that keep writers like him afloat.
Buy books on Amazon
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE grew up in Nigeria. Her work has been translated into more than fifty-five languages. She is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus, which won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize; Half of a Yellow Sun, which was the recipient of the Women’s Prize for Fiction “Best of the Best” award; Americanah, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award; the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck and the essays We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions. Her most recent work is an essay about losing her father, Notes on Grief, and Mama’s Sleeping Scarf, a children’s book written as Nwa Grace-James. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she divides her time between the Unit
Buy books on Amazon
Fatima Bala

Fatima Bala is a lecturer, poet, and writer who lives in Canada with her family and a pet fish named Fishy. Her books have received starred reviews from The Los Angeles Tribune, London Post, and New York Weekly. She graduated from Algonquin College, Vancouver Island University, and Stanford, where she studied Tourism, Business Management, and International Women's Rights. She loves traveling, playing board games, and watching movies with unanticipated twists.

Her Instagram account is @aka.fatima.bala
Buy books on Amazon
Khadija Abdalla Bajaber

KHADIJA ABDALLA BAJABER is a Mombasa-born poet and novelist with a degree in journalism. A Kenyan of Hadrami descent, she writes about the ill-documented history of the Hadrami diaspora. Her work has been published in Brainstorm Kenya and the Enkare Review, and she is the assistant poetry editor for the Panorama Travel Journal’s East African Issue. She lives in Mombasa, Kenya.
Buy books on Amazon
Khadija Abdalla Bajaber

KHADIJA ABDALLA BAJABER is a Mombasa-born poet and novelist with a degree in journalism. A Kenyan of Hadrami descent, she writes about the ill-documented history of the Hadrami diaspora. Her work has been published in Brainstorm Kenya and the Enkare Review, and she is the assistant poetry editor for the Panorama Travel Journal’s East African Issue. She lives in Mombasa, Kenya.
Buy books on Amazon
Rebeka Njau

Rebeka Njau (born 1932) is a Kenyan educator, writer and textile artist.

She was born in Kanyariri in the Kiambu district, attended high school in Nairobi and studied education at Makerere University College in Uganda. She was a founder of Nairobi Girls Secondary School and served as headmistress from 1965 to 1966. Her one act play The Scar (1965), which condemns female genital mutilation, was first published in the journal Transition in 1963 and is considered to be the first play written by a Kenyan woman. Her play In the Round was performed in 1964 and was banned by the Ugandan government.

Her first novel Alone with the Fig Tree was rewritten as Ripples in the Pool (1975), which was awarded the East Africa Writing Committee Prize. Njau also
Buy books on Amazon
Binyavanga Wainaina

Binyavanga Wainaina was a short story writer, essayist, and journalist.

He was the founding editor of Kwani?, a leading African literary magazine based in Kenya, and he directed the Chinua Achebe Center for African Writers and Artists at Bard College.

He won the 2002 Caine Prize for African Writing, and wrote for many journals, including Vanity Fair, National Geographic, One Story, Tin House, Virginia Quarterly Review, Harper's, Granta, the Sunday Times, and the New York Times.
Buy books on Amazon