Grace Ogot is 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

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First published 02 November 2007

Citation: Oldfield, Elizabeth Fiona. "Grace Akinyi Ogot". The Literary Encyclopedia. 2 November 2007.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3397, accessed 9 February 2010.]