Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor is a Kenyan writer, cultural thinker and co-founder of the Macondo Literature Festival. Born in Nairobi, she studied English and History at Kenyatta University, earned an MA from the University of Reading, UK, and an MPhil in Creative Writing from the University of Queensland, Australia.

Her novella The Weight of Whispers, published by Kwani?, won the 2003 Caine Prize for African Writing. Her acclaimed novels Dust (2014) and The Dragonfly Sea (2019) explore memory, history, belonging and the entangled worlds of Africa and the Indian Ocean. The Dragonfly Sea, in particular, imaginatively engages Africa–China relations through the intimate life of a young woman on Kenya’s coast. Her third novel, Nocturne, is forthcoming, while she is at work on The Coffee Mistress, a cross-continental literary work connecting Africa and South America through coffee, history and memory. Owuor’s fiction and essays have appeared internationally, including in National Geographic. She has also worked extensively across film, literature, environmental conservation and cultural exchange. From 2003 to 2005, she was Executive Director of the Zanzibar International Film Festival, where she established its first literary forum. A speaker on various geopolitical topics, including the Africa-Asia Confluences, she was also a recipient of Kenya’s Head of State Commendation.