| Intro | Kenyan academic |
| Is | Academic |
| From | Kenya |
| Type | Education |
| Gender | female |
| Birth |
1961 |
| Age | 60 years |
Wangui Wa Goro (born 1961) is a Kenyan academic, social critic, researcher, translator and writer based in the UK. As a public intellectual she has an interest in the development of African languages and literatures, as well as being consistently involved with the promotion of literary translation internationally, regularly speaking and writing on the subject.
Background and career
Wangui Wa Goro was born in Kenya but has lived in exile in England for many years, as a consequence of clashing with the Kenyan administration because of her human rights activism.
She has translated the works of award-winning authors, including Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s satire Matigari and his children’s works Njamba Nene and the Flying Bus (1986) and Njamba Nene’s Pistol (1990), from Gikuyu to English, as well as Véronique Tadjo’s poetry book A vol d’oiseau (As the Crow Flies, Heinemann African Writers Series, 2001) from French.
Wa Goro’s own writing encompasses poetry, essays, short stories, fiction and non-fiction. Her short story “Heaven and Earth” (Macmillan) has been taught on the Kenyan curriculum. She has also been an active campaigner for human rights in Africa and Europe, and co-edited with Kelly Coate and Suki Ali the book Global Feminist Politics: Identities in a Changing World (Routledge, 2001). Publications to which she has contributed include Under the Tree of Talking: Leadership for Change in Africa (2007), edited by Onyekachi Wambu, and the 2006 anthology African Love Stories, edited by Ama Ata Aidoo.
She is a regular participant at the Royal African Society’s annual literature and book festival Africa Writes, among other events curating the symposium “Africa in Translation” that features writers, artists, publishers, translators, readers and scholars, under the aegis of SIDENSi, an international organisation set up “to promote translation, traducture and information knowledge management across disciplines”.
Over the years she has also been on advisory committees or boards of numerous organisations, including the Women’s Studies Network UK, the British Centre for Literary Translation, the Arts Council England, PEN International and the African Literature Association. She has serves as a council member of the Caine Prize for African Writing, for which she was a judge in 2007.