Past ACCFs

Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature
University of California, Irvine, USA

Professor Ngugi wa Thiong'o, currently Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Director of the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine, was born in Kenya, in 1938. He is one of Africa's greatest living novelists, playwrights, cultural and literary theoreticians and intellectuals.

Ngugi burst onto the literary scene in East Africa with the performance of his first major play, The Black Hermit in 1962 as part of the celebration of Uganda's Independence. In 1967, Ngugi became lecturer in English Literature at the University of Nairobi. He taught there until 1977. His first novel in ten years - Petals of Blood, depicted a harsh and unsparing picture of life in neo-colonial Kenya, was published in the same year. His works were politically controversial. He was arrested and imprisoned without charge and was released with the help of International Amnesty in 1978.

Ngugi went into self-imposed exile after he had learnt that the Moi regime's plot to eliminate him. He was first in Britain (1982 –1989), and then the U.S. after (1989-2002), during this period, he was Visiting Professor in various universities in Europe and US (including Yale). He then became Professor of Comparative Literature and Performance Studies at New York University (1992 –2002).

Ngugi has continued to write prolifically, publishing, in 2006, what some have described as his crowning achievement, Wizard of the Crow, an English translation of the Gikuyu language novel, Murogi wa Kagogo. On August 8, 2004, Ngugi ended his exile by visiting Kenya as part of a month-long tour of East Africa.