Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka Hon. FRSL, 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, for "in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashioning the drama of existence", the first sub-Saharan African to be honoured in that category.
Chinua Achebe was a Nigerian novelist, poet, and critic who is regarded as a central figure of modern African literature. His first novel and magnum opus, Things Fall Apart (1958), occupies a pivotal place in African literature and remains the most widely studied, translated, and read African novel. Along with Things Fall Apart, his No Longer at Ease (1960) and Arrow of God (1964) complete the "African Trilogy". Later novels include A Man of the People (1966) and Anthills of the Savannah (1987). In the West, Achebe is often referred to as the "father of African literature", although he vigorously rejected the characterization.
Chief Daniel Olorunfẹmi Fágúnwà MBE, popularly known as D. O. Fágúnwà, was a Nigerian author of Yorùbá heritage who pioneered the Yorùbá language novel.
The University of Ibadan (UI) is a public research university in Ibadan, Nigeria. The university was founded in 1948 as University College Ibadan, one of many colleges within the University of London. It became an independent university in 1962 and is the oldest degree-awarding institution in Nigeria. Through its graduate network, the University of Ibadan has contributed to the political, industrial, economic and cultural development of Nigeria. The history and influence of the University of Ibadan have made it one of the most prestigious universities in Africa.
Chief Ògúnwán̄dé "Wán̄dé" Abím̄bọ́lá is a Nigerian academician, a professor of Yoruba language and literature, and a former vice-chancellor of the University of Ife. He has also served as the Majority Leader of the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Chief Abimbola was installed as Àwísẹ Awo Àgbàyé in 1981 by the Ooni of Ife on the recommendation of a conclave of Babalawos of Yorubaland.
Florence Nwanzuruahu Nkiru Nwapa, was a Nigerian author who has been called the mother of modern African Literature. She was the forerunner to a generation of African women writers, and the first African woman novelist to be published in the English language in Britain. She achieved international recognition with her first novel Efuru, published in 1966 by Heinemann Educational Books. While never considering herself a feminist, she was best known for recreating life and traditions from an Igbo woman's viewpoint.
Tope Alabi in Ogun, a Nigerian gospel singer, film music composer and actress. She is also known as Ore ti o common and as Agbo Jesu. Tope Alabi obtained a Higher National Diploma in Mass Communication from the polytechnic of Ibadan, after graduating in the year 1990, she worked as a correspondent at NTA in Ibadan. She started singing at the younger age, when she joined the choir in her local Catholic church at the age of seven. Tope has ability to produce different traditional and modern beats. She had composed and released several songs and couple with Christian slangs that made her different.
Francis Abiola Irele was a Nigerian academic best known as the doyen of Africanist literary scholars worldwide. He was Provost at Kwara State University, founded in 2009 in Ilorin, Nigeria. Before moving back to Nigeria, Irele was Visiting Professor of African and African American Studies and of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University.
Paul Newman is an American linguist active in the study of African languages. He writes on the Hausa language of Nigeria and on the Chadic language family. He wrote the Modern Hausa-English Dictionary (1977), co-authored with his wife, Roxana Ma Newman, and The Hausa Language: An Encyclopedic Reference Grammar (2000). He is the founder of the Journal of African Languages and Linguistics, a journal in the field of African-language studies.
Lola Shoneyin is a Nigerian poet and author who launched her debut novel, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives, in the UK in May 2010. Shoneyin has forged a reputation as an adventurous, humorous and outspoken poet, having published three volumes of poetry. Her writing delves into themes related to female sexuality and the difficulties of domestic life in Africa. In April 2014 she was named on the Hay Festival's Africa39 list of 39 Sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define trends in African literature. Lola won the PEN Award in America as well as the Ken Saro-Wiwa Award for prose in Nigeria. She was also on the list for the Orange Prize in the UK for her debut novel, The Secret of Baba Segi's Wives, in 2010. She lives in Lagos, Nigeria, where she runs the annual Aké Arts and Book Festival. In 2017, she was named African Literary Person of the Year by Brittle Paper.
Isidore Okpewho, NNOM, was a Nigerian novelist and critic. He won the 1976 African Arts Prize for Literature, and the 1993 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Best Book Africa.
Tope Folarin is a Nigerian-American writer and executive director of the Institute for Policy Studies. He won the 2013 Caine Prize for African Writing for his short story "Miracle". In April 2014 he was named in the Hay Festival's Africa39 project as one of the 39 Sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 with the potential and the talent to define the trends of the region. His story "Genesis" was shortlisted for the 2016 Caine Prize.
Femi Odugbemi is a writer, filmmaker, television producer, and the founder/executive producer of Zuri24 Media, a content production company in Lagos.
Ato Quayson is a Ghanaian literary critic and Professor of English at Stanford University where he acts as the current chair of the department. He is also the chair of the newly established Department of African and African American Studies. He was formerly a Professor of English at New York University (NYU), and before that was University Professor of English and inaugural Director of the Centre for Diaspora Studies at the University of Toronto. His writings on African literature, postcolonial studies, disability studies, urban studies and in literary theory have been widely published. He is a Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences (2006) and the Royal Society of Canada (2013), and in 2019 was elected Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. He was Chief Examiner in English of the International Baccalaureate (2005–07), and has been a member of the Diaspora and Migrations Project Committee of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) of the UK, and the European Research Council award grants panel on culture and cultural production (2011–2017). He is a former President of the African Studies Association.
Ogaga Ifowodo is a Nigerian lawyer, scholar, poet, columnist/public commentator and human rights activist. He was awarded the 1998 PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award, given to writers "anywhere in the world who have fought courageously in the face of adversity for the right to freedom of expression.
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.
Tunde Alabi-Hundeyin is a Nigerian television and film producer, director and screenwriter. He is the founder/CEO of Dudu Productions, the television production company which produced the first commercial music video in Nigeria. He has since produced a number of Nigerian music acts, including Sir Shina Peters, Sonny Okosun, Majek Fashek, Onyeka Onwenu and K1 De Ultimate. He produced and directed box office hits like Iyawo Alhaji and Ami Orun, including Ireke Onibudo, which predates Nigeria's Nollywood.
O Le Ku is a 1997 Nigerian romantic drama film produced and directed by Tunde Kelani. It is an adaptation of Prof. Akinwunmi Ishola's novel of the same name. It was released in 1997 by Mainframe Film and Television Productions. It was made in two parts.
Ìrèké Oníbùdó is the third novel by the Yorùbá author D.O. Fágúnwà, published in 1949 by Thomas Nelson.
Jane Bryce is a British writer, journalist, literary and cultural critic, as well as an academic. She was born and raised in Tanzania, has lived in Italy, the UK and Nigeria, and since 1992 has been based in Barbados. Her writing for a wide range of publications has focused on contemporary African and Caribbean fiction, postcolonial cinema and creative writing, and she is Professor Emerita of African Literature and Cinema at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill.
