Abubakar Adam Ibrahim | |
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 Abubakar Adam Ibrahim | |
| Born | Jos, Nigeria |
| Nationality | Nigerian |
| Alma mater | University of Jos |
| Occupation(s) | Writer, journalist |
| Notable work | Season of Crimson Blossoms |
| Awards | Nigeria Prize for Literature (2016) |
Abubakar Adam Ibrahim is a Nigerian writer and journalist. He was described by German broadcaster Deutsche Welle as a northern Nigerian "literary provocateur" amidst the international acclaim his award-winning novel Season of Crimson Blossoms received in 2016. [1]
Abubakar Adam Ibrahim was born in Jos, North-Central Nigeria, and holds a BA degree in Mass Communication from the University of Jos. [2]
His debut short-story collection The Whispering Trees was longlisted for the inaugural Etisalat Prize for Literature in 2014, [3] with the title story shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing. [4] The collection was re-published by Cassava Republic Press for international distribution in 2020 [5] and a French translation was published in 2022. [6]
In 2014 he was selected for the Africa39 list of writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define future trends in African literature, [7] [8] and was included in the anthology Africa39: New Writing from Africa South of the Sahara (ed. Ellah Allfrey). [9] He was a mentor on the 2013 Writivism programme and judged the Writivism Short Story Prize in 2014. [10] He was chair of judges for the 2016 Etisalat Flash Fiction Prize. [11]
Ibrahim has won the BBC African Performance Prize [12] and the ANA Plateau/Amatu Braide Prize for Prose. He is a Gabriel Garcia Marquez Fellow (2013), [13] a Civitella Ranieri Fellow (2015) [14] and a 2018 Art OMI Fellow. [15] In 2016, Ibrahim was the recipient of the Goethe-Institut & Sylt Foundation African Writer's Residency Award [16] and in March 2020 he was a Dora Maar Fellow. [17]
His first novel, Season of Crimson Blossoms, was published in 2015 by Parrésia Publishers in Nigeria and by Cassava Republic Press in the UK (2016). [18] It was translated into French by Marc Amfreville, published by L'Editions de l'Observatoire in 2018 [19] and nominated for the Prix Femina Étranger. [20] The German translation was published by Residenz Verlag in 2019. [21] Season of Crimson Blossoms was shortlisted in September 2016 for the Nigeria Prize for Literature, Africa's largest literary prize. [22] It was announced on 12 October 2016 that Ibrahim was the winner of the $100,000 prize. [23] [24]
His second short story collection, Dreams and Assorted Nightmares was published by Masobe Books in 2020. [25]
His short story A Love Like This , narrated by Georgina Elizabeth Okon, Nene Nwoko and Ike Amadi, was published as an Audible Original Story in 2021.
Ibrahim worked at the Daily Trust newspaper for over a decade in a variety of roles, latterly as Features Editor, before leaving to pursue postgraduate studies. [26] He continues to write a weekly column entitled 'Line of Sight'. [27] Ibrahim's reporting from North-East Nigeria has won particular critical acclaim. In May 2018 he was announced as the winner of the Michael Elliot Award for Excellence in African Storytelling, awarded by the International Center for Journalists, for his report "All That Was Familiar", published in Granta magazine in May 2017. [28] Ibrahim was a 2018 Ochberg Fellow at the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. [29]
He has spoken at numerous events, conferences and festivals including the Hay Festival, Edinburgh International Book Festival, the British Library, Jaipur Literature Festival, PEN World Voices and at the Library of Congress. [30]
He lives in Abuja, Nigeria.
Chika Nina Unigwe is a Nigerian-born Igbo author who writes in English and Dutch. In April 2014 she was selected for the Hay Festival's Africa39 list of 39 Sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define future trends in African literature. Previously based in Belgium, she now lives in the United States.
Adrian Igonibo Barrett is a Nigerian writer of short stories and novels. In 2014, he was named on the Africa39 list of writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define future trends in African literature. Following his two collections of short stories – From Caves of Rotten Teeth (2005) and Love Is Power, or Something Like That (2013) – his first novel, Blackass, was published in 2015, described by the Chicago Review of Books as "Kafka with a wink".
Zukiswa Wanner is a South African journalist, novelist and editor born in Zambia and now based in Kenya. Since 2006, when she published her first book, her novels have been shortlisted for awards including the South African Literary Awards (SALA) and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. In 2015, she won the K Sello Duiker Memorial Literary Award for London Cape Town Joburg (2014). In 2014, Wanner was named on the Africa39 list of 39 Sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define trends in African literature. In 2020, she was awarded the Goethe Medal alongside Ian McEwan and Elvira Espejo Ayca, making Wanner the first African woman to win the award.
The 9mobile Prize for Literature was created by Etisalat Nigeria in 2013, and is the first ever pan-African prize celebrating first-time African writers of published fiction books. Awarded annually, the prize aims to serve as a platform for the discovery of new creative talent out of the continent and invariably promote the burgeoning publishing industry in Africa. The winner receives a cash prize of £15,000 in addition to a fellowship at the University of East Anglia.
Ellah Wakatama, OBE, Hon. FRSL, is the Editor-at-Large at Canongate Books, a senior Research Fellow at Manchester University, and Chair of the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing. She was the founding Publishing Director of the Indigo Press. A London-based editor and critic, she was on the judging panel of the 2017 International Dublin Literary Award and the 2015 Man Booker Prize. In 2016, she was a Visiting Professor & Global Intercultural Scholar at Goshen College, Indiana, and was the Guest Master for the 2016 Gabriel Garcia Marquez Foundation international journalism fellowship in Cartagena, Colombia. The former deputy editor of Granta magazine, she was the senior editor at Jonathan Cape, Random House and an assistant editor at Penguin. She is series editor of the Kwani? Manuscript Project and the editor of the anthologies Africa39 and Safe House: Explorations in Creative Nonfiction.
Africa39 was a collaborative project initiated by the Hay Festival in partnership with Rainbow Book Club, celebrating Port Harcourt: UNESCO World Book Capital 2014 by identifying 39 of the most promising writers under the age of 40 with the potential and talent to define trends in the development of literature from Africa and the African diaspora. Launched in 2014, Africa39 followed the success of two previous Hay Festival initiatives linked to World Book Capital cities, Bogotá39 (2007) and Beirut39 (2009).
Ukamaka Evelyn Olisakwe is a Nigerian feminist author, short-story writer, and screenwriter. In 2014 she was chosen as one of 39 of Sub-Saharan Africa's most promising writers under the age of 40, showcased in the Africa39 project and included in the anthology Africa39: New Writing from Africa South of the Sahara.
Elnathan John is a Nigerian novelist, satirist and lawyer whose stories have twice been shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing.
Cassava Republic Press is a steering African book publishing company established in Nigeria in 2006 and headed by Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, with a focus on affordability, the need to find and develop local talent, and to publish African writers too often celebrated only in Europe and America. Cassava Republic's stated mission is "to change the way we all think about African writing. (...) to build a new body of African writing that links writers across different times and spaces." The publishing house is considered to be "at the centre of a thriving literary scene" that has seen Nigerian writers in particular, as well as writers from elsewhere on the African continent, having considerable success both at home and internationally. ThisDay newspaper has stated of the publishing house that "it is credited with innovation. From driving down the cost of books to using digital media to drive sales, Cassava has invariably sought to redefine the African narrative."
Bibi Bakare-Yusuf Hon. FRSL is a Nigerian academic, writer and editor from Lagos, Nigeria. She co-founded the publishing company Cassava Republic Press in 2006, in Abuja with Jeremy Weate. Cassava Republic Press was created with a focus on affordability, the need to find and develop local talent, and to publish African writers too often celebrated only in Europe and America. Bakare-Yusuf was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2019, as well as having been selected as a Yale World Fellow, a Desmond Tutu Fellow and a Frankfurt Book Fair Fellow.
Hawa Jande Golakai is a Liberian writer and clinical scientist. In 2014 she was chosen as one of 39 of Sub-Saharan Africa's most promising writers under the age of 40, showcased in the Africa39 project and included in the anthology Africa39: New Writing from Africa South of the Sahara.
Richard Ali is a Nigerian writer, lawyer and co-founder of Parrésia Publishers, a Lagos-based Afri-centric publishing house, home to Helon Habila, Onyeka Nwelue, Chika Unigwe and Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, other continental voices.
Yewande Omotoso is a South African-based novelist, architect and designer, who was born in Barbados and grew up in Nigeria. She currently lives in Johannesburg. Her two published novels have earned her considerable attention, including winning the South African Literary Award for First-Time Published Author, being shortlisted for the South African Sunday Times Fiction Prize, the M-Net Literary Awards 2012, and the 2013 Etisalat Prize for Literature, and being longlisted for the 2017 Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction. She is the daughter of Nigerian writer Kole Omotoso, and the sister of filmmaker Akin Omotoso.
Season of Crimson Blossoms is an adult fiction debut novel by Nigerian writer and journalist Abubakar Adam Ibrahim. The novel, set largely in the outskirts of Abuja, Nigeria, depicts an unusual salacious affair between the 55-year old widow Hajiya Binta and the 26-year old drug dealer and local gang leader Reza.
Parrésia, also Parrésia Publishers Ltd, is a publishing company in Nigeria founded by Azafi Omoluabi Ogosi and Richard Ali in 2012 with the aim of selling books to the Nigerian reading audience and promote the freedom of the imagination and the free press. It was described in 2017 by The New York Times as one of "a handful of influential new publishing houses" in Africa in the last decade.
Pius Adebola Adesanmi was a Nigerian-born Canadian academic and author. He was the author of Naija No Dey Carry Last, a 2015 collection of satirical essays. Adesanmi died on 10 March 2019, when Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed shortly after take-off.
Nigeria Prize for Literature is a Nigerian literary award given annually since 2004 to honor literary erudition by Nigerian authors. The award rotates among four genres; fiction, poetry, drama and children's literature, repeating the cycle every four years. With the total prize value of US$100,000 to individual winner, it is the biggest literary award in Africa and one of the richest literary awards in the world.
Edwige-Renée Dro is a writer, translator and literary activist from Côte d'Ivoire. She is co-founder of the literature collective Abidjan Lit.
Masobe Books is an independent Nigerian publishing company. It was founded in 2018 by Nigerian author Othuke Ominiabohs and has since become one of the leading publishers of contemporary African writing on the continent.
Yejide Kilanko is a Nigerian Canadian fiction writer and social worker. She is known for addressing violence against women in her work. Her debut novel, Daughters Who Walk This Path, was a Canadian fiction bestseller in 2012.
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