Grace Akinyi Ogot

Elizabeth Fiona Oldfield (University of Derby)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 8.2.3: Anglophone African Writing and Culture: Subsaharan.
Vol. editors: Helen Rachel Cousins (Birmingham Newman University), David Firth (University of Manchester), Alex Nelungo Wanjala (University of Nairobi)

Dates

Born 1930
Died 2015
Activity 1963-2015

Places

Born in Kenya
Active in Kenya; United Kingdom

Activities

Primary

Novelist
Story-writer

Resources

Ogot's Works

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Grace Ogot was a well-known Kenyan female writer in English and Luo and regarded as “one of Africa's leading women achievers” (Kuria, 71). In 1963 her first short stories appeared in

Black Orpheus

making her the first Anglophone Kenyan female writer to be published. She was also the first woman fiction writer to be published by the East African Publishing House. Appointed by President Daniel Arap Moi to the Kenya parliament, Ogot was the first female minister in Kenya and the only female assistant minister in President Moi's cabinet. It has been said that one of her strengths as a writer is that “she manages to write from the inside of traditional Luo society [the third largest ethnic group in Kenya], so that it comes to life in a wholly new way” (Welbourn, 290).

Ogot was born on

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1197 words

Citation: Oldfield, Elizabeth Fiona. "Grace Akinyi Ogot". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 02 November 2007; last revised 22 July 2022. [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3397, accessed 20 May 2024.]

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