Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka, known as Wole Soyinka, is a Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist in the English language. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first sub-Saharan African to be honoured in that category. Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. In 1954, he attended Government College in Ibadan, and subsequently University College Ibadan and the University of Leeds in England. After studying in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and her campaign for independence from British colonial rule. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967, during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years.
Amos Tutuola was a Nigerian writer who wrote books based in part on Yoruba folk-tales.
Nigerian literature may be roughly defined as the literary writing by citizens of the nation of Nigeria for Nigerian readers, addressing Nigerian issues. This encompasses writers in a number of languages, including not only English but Igbo, Urhobo, Yoruba, and in the northern part of the county Hausa and Nupe. More broadly, it includes British Nigerians, Nigerian Americans and other members of the African diaspora.
African literature is literature from Africa, either oral ("orature") or written in African and Afro-Asiatic languages.
Yoruba literature is the spoken and written literature of the Yoruba people, one of the largest ethno-linguistic groups in Nigeria and the rest of Africa. The Yoruba language is spoken in Nigeria, Benin, and Togo, as well as in dispersed Yoruba communities throughout the world.
Tanure Ojaide is a Nigerian poet and academic. As a writer, he is noted for his unique stylistic vision and for his intense criticism of imperialism, religion, and other issues. He is regarded as a socio-political and an ecocentric poet. He won the 2018 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa with his collection Songs of Myself: A Quartet (2017).
Demas Nwoko is a Nigerian artist, protean designer, architect and master builder. As an artist, he strives to incorporate modern techniques in architecture and stage design to enunciate African subject matter in most of his works. In the 1960s, he was a member of the Mbari club of Ibadan, a committee of burgeoning Nigerian and foreign artists. He was also a lecturer at the University of Ibadan. In the 1970s, he was the publisher of the now defunct New Culture magazine.
Wole Oguntokun is a Nigerian playwright, dramaturge, stage and screen director. He is also a theatre administrator and newspaper columnist.
Chin Ce is a Nigerian writer of poetry, fiction and essays and a graphic editor.
Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa is a pan-African writing prize awarded biennially to the best literary work produced by an African. It was established by the Lumina Foundation in 2005 in honour of Africa's first Nobel Laureate in Literature, Wole Soyinka, who presents the prize, which is chosen by an international jury of literary figures. Administered by the Lumina Foundation, the prize has been described as "the African equivalent of the Nobel Prize".
Kongi's Harvest is a 1970's Nigerian drama film directed by Ossie Davis. The film was adapted from a screenplay by Wole Soyinka adapted from his 1965 play of the same name. Soyinka also starred in the leading role as the dictator of an African nation.
Kongi's Harvest is a 1965 play written by Wole Soyinka. It premiered in Dakar, Senegal, at the first Negro Arts Festival in April 1966. It was later adapted as a film of the same name, directed by the American Ossie Davis.
The Port Harcourt Book Festival is an annual literary event in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria, organised by the Rainbow Book Club and endorsed by the Rivers State Government since 2008. The Garden City Literary Festival, which is currently known as the Port Harcourt Book Festival was founded by Governor Amaechi of Rivers State, Hundreds of literary fans flock to the Garden City every year for this six-day event, which includes a book fair, writers' workshops, and a variety of other activities. In the past the Festival has been attended by recognized authors and has hosted a number of celebrities.
Aké: The Years of Childhood is a memoir by Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka that was first published in 1981.
Harriet Anena is a Ugandan writer and performer, whose writing includes poetry, nonfiction and fiction. She is the author of a collection of poems, A Nation In Labour, published in 2015, won the 2018 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa. The Economist described her poetry performance as "an arresting evocation of love and war".
The Interpreters is a novel by Wole Soyinka, first published in London by André Deutsch in 1965 and later republished as part of the influential Heinemann African Writers Series. It is the first and one of the only three novels written by Soyinka; he is principally known as a playwright. The novel was written in English and later translated into a number of languages.
Season of Anomy is the second novel of Nobel winning Nigerian playwright and critic Wole Soyinka. Published in 1973, the novel is one of only three novels published during Soyinka's highly productive literary career. Though highly studied as part of Soyinka's importance to the African literary canon, criticism of the novel has been mixed, with some critics describing the novel as a "failure".
Black Orpheus was a Nigeria-based literary journal founded in 1957 by German expatriate editor and scholar Ulli Beier that has been described as "a powerful catalyst for artistic awakening throughout West Africa". Its name derived from a 1948 essay by Jean-Paul Sartre, "Orphée Noir", published as a preface to Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache, edited by Léopold Sédar Senghor. Beier wrote in an editorial statement in the inaugural volume that "it is still possible for a Nigerian child to leave a secondary school with a thorough knowledge of English literature, but without even having heard of Léopold Sédar Senghor or Aimé Césaire", so Black Orpheus became a platform for Francophone as well as Anglophone writers.
The Mbari Club was a centre for cultural activity by African writers, artists and musicians that was founded in Ibadan, Nigeria, in 1961 by Ulli Beier, with the involvement of a group of young writers including Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe. Mbari, an Igbo concept related to "creation", was suggested as the name by Achebe. Among other Mbari members were Christopher Okigbo, J. P. Clark and South African writer Ezekiel Mphahlele, Frances Ademola, Demas Nwoko, Mabel Segun, Uche Okeke, Arthur Nortje and Bruce Onobrakpeya.
Ivor Agyeman-Duah is a Ghanaian academic, economist, writer, editor and film director. He has worked in Ghana's diplomatic service and has served as an advisor on development policy.
