Embracing renewal and lessons from life as we step into 2026

The year 2025 has been a tough one for the literary community in Kenya and Africa. It was the year when we lost some of the finest, globally renowned writers. We lost Ngugi wa Thiong’o on May 28, 2025. Ngugi, who died aged 87, championed a campaign for the decolonisation of the mind that reverberated across the world from the late 1950s.

The year opened on a sad note when we lost Kenyan author and columnist Rasna Warah on January 11, 2025. We also lost Meja Mwangi on December 11, 2025, the author of Kill Me Quick, Going Down River Road and ‘The Silent Song’, the short story that gives the title to the current short stories set-book for secondary schools in Kenya. Meja was easily Kenya’s most prolific writer, both quantitatively and qualitatively.