April Zhu (朱萸) is a freelance journalist and writer based in Nairobi, Kenya. Her work focuses on gender, urban inequality, and China-Kenya as seen from the margin.

She was a Senior Editor at Guernica Magazine, as well as a 2023 Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellow and a 2020 Blakemore Freeman Foundation Fellow, during which she studied at the IUP Chinese Center at Tsinghua University. She has received nominations in 2023 for the Pushcart Prize and Best American Essays. She is the producer of Until Everyone Is Free, a Sheng podcast on the life and work of Kenyan socialist and freedom fighter Pio Gama Pinto.

Her byline has appeared in The New York Review of Books Daily, Guernica Magazine, Foreign Policy, The Baffler Magazine, The South China Morning Post Magazine, VOA News, The New Humanitarian, Rest of World, The Elephant, CS Monitor, African Arguments, SupChina, VICE, BRIGHT Magazine, and others.

Past public speaking engagements include the 2024 Mathrubhumi International Festival of Letters, Georgetown University (Doyle Seminar), Wellesley College (Calderwood Seminar), University of Wisconsin (class guest speaker), University of Florida Center for African Studies, African Studies Association (roundtable).

She reports in Kiswahili and Mandarin and has designed a curriculum for foreigners learning Kenyan Kiswahili called Swahii, available as an online course.

She holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies and Studio Art from Wellesley College. She is also an artist and still occasionally shows work in Nairobi. Design work pays some bills.

For full CV and other inquiries, get in touch at aprzhu@gmail.com and @aprzhu.