Photograph © Internaz
Binyavanga Wainaina talks to Ellah Allfrey about meeting the expectations of an African readership and what to do with a bad review.
Photograph © Internaz
‘The anglophone world, we have to infer, has run out of words for its own feelings.’
Daisy Hildyard on the wisdom of scarecrows.
‘What is the read receipt for?’
Lillian Fishman on texting, power and the ethics of leaving a friend on read.
‘Like pretty much everyone who uses the internet, I have seen many terrible things that I did not search for and that I cannot unsee.’
Rosanna McLaughlin on what the internet thinks she wants.
‘I have a pathological addiction to the internet, which I indulge with the excuse of making art. It rarely translates to anything good and mostly leaves me overstimulated and afraid.’
Paul Dalla Rosa on excess and the internet.
‘rumors of bees on speedwell, / no oxidative stress just / effortless pollination’
Two poems by Sylvia Legris.
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.
More about the author →‘My first name, Binyavanga, has always been a sort of barometer of public mood.’
‘Always end your book with Nelson Mandela saying something about rainbows or renaissances. Because you care.’
After a sudden stroke, Binyavanga Wainaina and his lover travel to Nairobi to reconcile with his father.
‘We are, it seems, in the middle of nowhere.’
‘You are what you do, and you are what you write, to some extent, I believe that at least.’
Lauren Oyler on personality, intention and the collapse between private and authorial selves.
‘Migration will not stop: if there is a single lesson to be taken home from Lesbos it is that.’
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