Doreen Baingana


Doreen Baingana is a Ugandan writer. Her short story collection, Tropical Fish, won the Grace Paley Award for Short Fiction in 2003 and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for best first book, Africa Region in 2006. Stories in it were finalists for the Caine Prize in 2004 and 2005. She was a Caine Prize finalist for the third time in 2021 and has received many other awards listed below.

Early life and education

Raised in Entebbe, Doreen Baingana attended Gayaza High School and obtained a law degree from Makerere University and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Maryland, College Park.
Immediately thereafter, she was appointed writer-in-residence at the . She embarked on a PhD in Creative Writing at the in 2023.

Career

Baingana won the Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction in 2003 for her collection Tropical Fish. It was published by the University of Massachusetts Press and Broadway Books in the US, Oshun Books in South Africa, and Cassava Republic Press in Nigeria. It has been translated into and . It is forthcoming in French. The linked stories, which explore the lives of three sisters growing up in Entebbe after the fall of Idi Amin, have been described by Publishers Weekly as "richly detailed stories" that are "lush with cultural commentary."
Baingana has published two children's books as well as short stories, essays, and articles in numerous journals and magazines including;,, The African American Review, Chelsea, Glimmer Train, Callaloo, Agni, The Caravan: A Journal of Politics and Culture, Transition, The Guardian, Chimurenga, Kwani?, ''Farafina and . Her stories have been broadcast on Voice of America and BBC and have been included in many anthologies including Gods and Soldiers: The Penguin Anthology of Contemporary African Writing; The Granta Anthology of African Fiction, Cultural Transformations, New Daughters of Africa. and .
Baingana was a contractor with Voice of America for a decade and taught at the, Bethesda, MD before returning to Uganda. She was a managing editor of Storymoja Africa, a Kenyan publisher, and chairperson of FEMRITE, the Uganda Women Writers Association. She co-founded and directs the Mawazo Africa Writing Institute and leads creative writing workshops across Africa.
The title story of Baingana's award-winning collection Tropical Fish'' has been adapted to the stage and performed at the Kampala International Theatre Festival and four other venues in Kampala, as well as the AfriCologne Theatre Festival in Cologne, Germany, in 2017. Another of Baingana's short stories, "Hills of Salt and Sugar", was adapted and staged at KITF 2018.
Baingana has been a judge for prizes including; The Afritondo Short Story Prize, the 9mobile Prize for Literature, the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, the Golden Baobab Prize and the Hurston/Wright Prize for Debut Fiction.

Awards

Published works

Non-fiction

  • , Crab Orchard Review, Winter 2002
  • , The Guardian, 2 August 2005
  • "Encounters", The "O" Magazine, South Africa, February 2006
  • A monthly column in the magazine African Woman, April 2006 to 2008
  • , in It's All Love: Black Writers on Soul Mates, Family and Friends, Broadway Books/Doubleday, 2009
  • "The Last Word", The African Report, December 2009
  • , African Cities II: Mobilities & Fixtures, 2011
  • , AGNI, September 2012START, Journal for East African Arts and Culture, July 2013
  • “Betty Oyella Bigombe” in When We Are Bold: Women Who Turn Our Upsidedown World Right, Nobel Women’s Initiative, 2016
  • “The Journey: Ebony Ava Harper” in This Bridge Called Woman, H.J. Twongyeirwe & A.T. Lichtenstein, eds., Femrite Publications, 2022.
  • “2022 AKO Caine Prize Shortlist Review,” Five Essays, Brittle Paper, July 2022.