Binyavanga Wainaina (born 1971) is a Kenyan author, journalist and winner of the Caine Prize.

Wainaina was born in Nakuru in Rift Valley province. He attended Moi Primary School in Nakuru, Mangu High School in Thika, and did his A levels in Lenana School in Nairobi. He later studied commerce at the University of Transkei in South Africa, after which he worked in Cape Town for some years as a freelance food and travel writer.

In July 2002 he won the Caine Prize for African Writing for his short story \\\"Discovering Home\\\". He is the founding editor of Kwani? the first literary magazine in East Africa since Transition Magazine. Since its founding, Kwani? has since become an important source of new writing from Africa; with several writers having been nominated for, and having won, the Caine Prize subsequently.

In 2003, he was given an award by the Kenya Publisher\\\'s Association, in recognition of his services to Kenyan Literature. He has also written for The EastAfrican, National Geographic, The Sunday Times (South Africa), Granta, the New York Times and The Guardian (UK).

He contributes regularly to South Africa’s leading online newspaper Mail & Guardian.In 2007, Wainaina was a Writer-in-Residence at Union Collegein Schenectady, NY (USA). In the fall of 2008, he was in residence at Williams College where he lectured Creative Writing while working on a novel. He is now a Bard Fellow and Director at the Chinua Achebe Centre for African Literature and Languages in Bard College.

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