Carey Baraka

Baraka reading in Iowa in 2022

Carey Baraka (born 1996) is a Kenyan writer of fiction and nonfiction. He was born in Kisumu, Kenya. He studied philosophy at the University of Nairobi. In 2024, he was announced as one of the winners of the Miles Morland Writing Scholarship.

Career

Baraka is known for his writing about African literary culture. In 2023, he wrote about Ngugi wa Thiong'o for The Guardian, and he has also written about Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Kwani?, Isak Dinesen and the history of Kampala as a literary capital in Africa. In 2024, he wrote about the cult killings in Shakahola for The Economist's 1843 Magazine, and was shortlisted for the Fetisov Award and the True Story Award for his work. He has also covered East Africa for Foreign Policy, The New York Review of Books, Financial Times, and The New York Times.

Awards

He has been shortlisted for the True Story Award, and the Festisov Award, and he has won the Miles Morland Scholarship, a MacDowell Fellowship, a fellowship from the University of Iowa's International Writing Program, and received grants from the Pulitzer Center and the Silvers Foundation.

References

  1. 1 2 "Carey Baraka - MacDowell Fellow in Literature". MacDowell. Retrieved 2025-06-21.
  2. 1 2 "Winners of the 2024 Morland Writing Scholarships - The Miles Morland Foundation". November 22, 2024.
  3. ↑ Baraka, Carey (2023-06-13). "Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o: three days with a giant of African literature". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2025-06-21.
  4. ↑ "Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor's weight of whispers—Carey Baraka considers Dust, The Dragonfly Sea and a novelist's mission to retell the 'vile things' of history". The Johannesburg Review of Books. 2020-03-05. Retrieved 2025-06-22.
  5. ↑ "Intimations of an ending—Carey Baraka on the unspoken demise of Kwani?, and the death of a dream". The Johannesburg Review of Books. 2020-08-27. Retrieved 2025-06-22.
  6. ↑ "The Original Karen". The Drift. 2021-02-01. Retrieved 2025-06-21.
  7. ↑ Baraka, Carey (2024-04-06). "A Golden Age in Africa's Literary History". The Republic. Retrieved 2025-06-21.
  8. ↑ "Inside the Kenyan cult that starved itself to death". The Economist. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 2025-06-21.
  9. 1 2 "Fetisov Journalism Awards". fjawards.com. Retrieved 2025-06-21.
  10. 1 2 "Winners 2025". True Story Award. Retrieved 2025-06-21.
  11. ↑ Baraka, Carey (2025-06-25). "Carey Baraka". Foreign Policy. Retrieved 2025-06-21.
  12. ↑ Baraka, Carey (2023-03-08). "The Political Education of William Ruto". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved 2025-06-21.
  13. ↑ Baraka, Carey (2023-08-26). "Whose gorillas are more famous?". Financial Times. Retrieved 2025-06-21.
  14. ↑ Baraka, Carey (2024-07-14). "Opinion | Something Big Just Happened in Kenya". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2025-06-21.
  15. ↑ "Residency Participants | The International Writing Program | Graduate College | The University of Iowa". iwp.uiowa.edu. Retrieved 2025-06-21.
  16. ↑ "Carey Baraka". Pulitzer Center. Retrieved 2025-06-21.
  17. ↑ "2022 Grant Recipients". The Robert B. Silvers Foundation. Retrieved 2025-06-21.