Ben Okri is a Nigerian poet and novelist. Okri is considered one of the foremost African authors in the post-modern and post-colonial traditions, and has been compared favourably to authors such as Salman Rushdie and Gabriel García Márquez.
Gabriel Imomotimi Okara was a Nigerian poet and novelist who was born in Bumoundi in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, Nigeria. The first Modernist poet of Anglophone Africa, he is best known for his early experimental novel, The Voice (1964), and his award-winning poetry, published in The Fisherman's Invocation (1978) and The Dreamer, His Vision (2005). In both his poems and his prose, Okara drew on African thought, religion, folklore and imagery, and he has been called "the Nigerian Negritudist". According to Brenda Marie Osbey, editor of his Collected Poems, "It is with publication of Gabriel Okara's first poem that Nigerian literature in English and modern African poetry in this language can be said truly to have begun."
Cyprian Ekwensi MFR was a Nigerian author of novels, short stories, and children's books.
Al Young is an American poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and professor.
Jewell Parker Rhodes is an American bestselling novelist and educator.
Sam Ukala is a Nigerian playwright, poet, short story writer, actor, theatre director, film producer and academic. Currently Professor of Theatre Arts and Drama at Delta State University, Abraka, Nigeria. Ukala has also been Professor of Drama and Theatre Arts at a number of Nigerian universities, including Edo State University. In 1993/94, as an academic staff fellow, he also researched and taught at the School of English Workshop Theatre of the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. As an academic, he propounded the theory of 'folkism', the tendency to base literary plays on indigenous history and culture and to compose and perform them in accordance with the aesthetics of African folktale composition and performance. He is currently Chairman of the Delta State Chapter of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA).
Christopher Abani is a Nigerian and American author. He says he is part of a new generation of Nigerian writers working to convey to an English-speaking audience the experience of those born and raised in "that troubled African nation".
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.
Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi, Arabic: الصادق الرضي, born January 1969 in Omdurman, Sudan, is a Sudanese writer and poet.
Richard John McCann was a writer of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. He lived in Washington, D.C., where he was a longtime professor in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at American University.
The Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) represents Nigerian creative writers at home and abroad. It was founded in 1981 with the novelist Chinua Achebe as its president. The immediate past President is Alhaji Denja Abdullahi.
Bernardine Anne Mobolaji Evaristo, OBE, FRSL, FRSA, FEA, is a British author. Her eighth book, the novel, Girl, Woman, Other, won the Booker Prize in 2019, making her the first black woman and the first black British person to win it. In 2020 she won the British Book Awards: Fiction Book of the Year and Author of the Year, as well as the Indie Book Award for Fiction. The novel was one of Barack Obama's 19 Favourite Books of 2019 and Roxane Gay's Favourite Book of 2019. In June 2020 she became the first woman of colour and the first black British writer to get to number 1 in the UK paperback fiction charts, where she held the top spot for five weeks. The novel is currently being translated into 35 languages. Evaristo's writing also includes short fiction, drama, poetry, essays, literary criticism, and projects for stage and radio. Two of her books, The Emperor's Babe (2001) and Hello Mum (2010), have been adapted into BBC Radio 4 dramas. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London, one of fewer than 30 black female professors out of around 20,000 professors overall. She was Vice-Chair of the Royal Society of Literature until 2020 when she became a lifetime Vice President. She is a lifetime Honorary Fellow of St Anne's College, University of Oxford and President of Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance, one of Britain's major drama schools.
Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu is a senior civil servant who was elected governor of Niger State, Nigeria in April 2007. He was reelected on 26 April 2011.
Tolu Ogunlesi is a Nigerian journalist, poet, photographer, fiction writer, and blogger. Ogunlesi was appointed to the role of Special Assistant on Digital/New Media by President Muhammadu Buhari on 18 February 2016.
Professor Muhammad Umaru Ndagi is a Professor of Arabic Language and Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics and African Languages, University of Abuja, Abuja, Nigeria.
Kaduna Book and Arts Festival, also known as KABAFEST, is an annual literary, cultural, and art event in Kaduna State, Nigeria that took place for the first time in July, 2017. It was organized by Book Buzz Foundation, who also organizes the annual Aké Arts and Book Festival, in collaboration with the Kaduna State Government and the Gusau Institute. It was also the first book festival that occurs annually in northern Nigeria.
Lesley Nneka Arimah is a Nigerian writer, and winner of the 2015 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for Africa, the 2017 O. Henry Prize, the 2017 Kirkus Prize, and the 2019 Caine Prize for African Writing. She has been described as "a skillful storyteller who can render entire relationships with just a few lines of dialogue" and "a new voice with certain staying power."
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.
Hadiza Isma El-Rufai is a Nigerian writer (novelist), and wife to the current governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai. She was the founder of Yasmin El-rufai Foundation (YELF), a non-profit literary organization.
Father O'connell Science College, Minna - Nigeria
