Kenyan LGBTQ activist and writer Binyavanga Wainaina has died.

AFP reports Wainaina’s publishing house announced his death on Wednesday.

"He passed on some time last night," Kwani Trust chairman Tom Maliti said.

"We lost Ken last night. We are grieving the loss… but Ken was an incredible person, with an incredible wit,” said Wainaina’s brother James. “The wound is still fresh, but we have received an outpouring of messages, from the people across the world, we are greatly comforted by them."

Wainaina was HIV positive and had a stroke in 2015. The 48-year-old attracted international attention when he won the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2002. Over a decade later, he sparked controversy when he publicly outed himself in his 2014 short story titled I am a Homosexual, Mum. He considered the piece a “lost chapter” of his 2011 memoir One Day I Will Write About This Place.

"I, Binyavanga Wainaina, quite honestly swear I have known I am a homosexual since I was five," he wrote.

It was a courageous move in a country with active anti-LGBTQ laws. He timed the article’s publishing to coincide with the announcement of bigoted laws in Nigeria, a nation he considered a second home.

"So as far as the emotional side was concerned, I did that a long time ago, this is more a political act," he admitted in January 2014. Two years later, he announced his HIV status around the same time as World AIDS Day.  

The 48-year-old sparked more discussion with How to Write About Africa, a satirical critique of stereotypes commonly associated with Africa, according to The Guardian.

“Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these,” he wrote. “If you must include an African, make sure you get one in Masai or Zulu or Dogon dress,” he wrote, signing off: “Always end your book with Nelson Mandela saying something about rainbows or renaissances. Because you care.”

Wainaina planned to marry his longtime partner before his death. Their engagement was announced last year on Facebook.

The death came two days before a decision from the Kenyan High Court regarding anti-LGBTQ laws. The court will decide if the laws are unconstitutional, reports VOA. If the court rules against the laws, Kenya will be the first East African country to decriminalize homosexuality.