Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (born James Ngugi; 5 Jan 1938) is a Kenyan writer and academic who writes primarily in Gikuyu. His work includes novels, plays, short stories, and essays, ranging from literary and social criticism to children's literature. He is the founder and editor of the Gikuyu-language journal Mũtĩiri. His short story The Upright Revolution: Or Why Humans Walk Upright, is translated into 98 languages from around the world. He has taught at Yale University for some years, and also at New York University, with a dual professorship in Comparative literature and Performance Studies, and at the University of California, Irvine. Ngũgĩ has frequently been regarded as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Among his children are the authors Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ and Wanjiku wa Ngũgĩ. Less