Benjamin Kwakye

Born in Accra, Ghana, Benjamin Kwakye attended the Presbyterian Secondary School (Presec), Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School.

At Dartmouth, he majored in Government (with an emphasis in international relations), spending trimesters in Arles, France, and at the London School of Economics and the United Nations Association in New York. He wrote and published poetry while in college, served as editor of Spirit (Dartmouth College’s African American Society’s literary journal), and received the Society’s 1990 Senior Honor Roll for outstanding leadership, distinguished service and intellectual and artistic creativity.

Kwakye has served as Resident Novelist of Window to Africa Radio and Afriscope Radio with Cyril Ibe, reviewing a number of African and African related titles on the air.

His books have won a number of awards, including the 1999 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book (Africa Region), the 2006 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book (Africa Region), the 2011 IPPY Gold Award for Adult Multicultural Fiction, and the 2021 African Literature Association Book of the Year Award. The Clothes of Nakedness has been adapted for radio as a BBC Play of the Week.

He is a director of The Africa Education Initiative, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting science education in Africa.