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Ama Ata Aidoo was a Ghanaian author, poet, playwright, politician, and academic. She was Secretary for Education in Ghana from 1982 to 1983 under Jerry Rawlings's PNDC administration. Her first play, The Dilemma of a Ghost, was published in 1965, making Aidoo the first published female African dramatist. As a novelist, she won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 1992 with the novel Changes. In 2000, she established the Mbaasem Foundation in Accra to promote and support the work of African women writers.
Efua Theodora Sutherland was a Ghanaian playwright, director, dramatist, children's author, poet, educationalist, researcher, child advocate, and cultural activist. Her works include the plays Foriwa (1962), Edufa (1967), and The Marriage of Anansewa (1975). She founded the Ghana Drama Studio, the Ghana Society of Writers, the Ghana Experimental Theatre, and a community project called the Kodzidan. As Ghana's earliest playwright-director, she was an influential figure in the development of modern Ghanaian theatre, and helped to introduce the study of African performance traditions at university level. She was also a pioneering African publisher, establishing the company Afram Publications in Accra in the 1970s.
Frank Kobina Parkes was a Ghanaian journalist, broadcaster and poet. He was the author of one book, Songs from the Wilderness, but is widely anthologised and is perhaps best known for his poem "African Heaven", which echoes the title of Carl Van Vechten's controversial 1926 novel Nigger Heaven, and was selected by Langston Hughes for inclusion in the groundbreaking anthology of African writing An African Treasury (1960). Parkes' poetic style, an intelligent, rhythmic free verse brimming with confidence and undercut with humour, is believed to owe much to the Senegalese poet David Diop, one of the pioneers of the négritude movement. Reviewing Songs from the Wilderness, Mbella Sonne Dipoko said: "Mr Parkes is one of the fine poets writing today about Africa and the world." The book was hailed as "...a landmark not only in Ghanaian poetry but in African poetry as a whole".
Voices of Ghana: Literary Contributions to the Ghana Broadcasting System 1955–57 was "the first Ghanaian literary anthology of poems, stories, plays and essays". Edited by Henry Swanzy and published in 1958 by the Ghanaian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Voices of Ghana contained works that had been broadcast on the Ghana radio programmes The Singing Net, Sound Judgement and Akan Theatre between 1955 and 1957. The collection opened with an essay, "The Poetry of Drums", by Kwabena Nketia, and the writers anthologised included Frank Parkes, A. W. Kayper-Mensah, Kwesi Brew, Cameron Duodu, Amu Djoleto, Efua T. Sutherland Robert K. Gardiner and Geormbeeyi Adali-Mortty. According to Nigerian writer Cyprian Ekwensi, the anthology was Ghana's declaration of its "literary achievement" and was "bound to lead to intense literary awakening throughout the coast".
The Golden Baobab Prize is awarded annually to African writers of children's literature and young adult literature. The Golden Baobab Prize accepts entries of unpublished short stories written by African citizens irrespective of age, race or geographical location. The prize is awarded annually to African citizens who submit a short story geared toward children and/or young adults in one of three categories: Junior Category, Senior Category and a Rising Writer prize for a promising writer aged 18 years and under. Entry into the prize is by email, submitted stories should be unpublished works in English. Established in July 2008, the Golden Baobab Prize is an African literary award that aims to encourage the writing of African literature for children and young adults. Its mission is to identify African literary giants of the next generation and produce classic African stories that will be appreciated for years to come.
The NGC Bocas Lit Fest is the Trinidad and Tobago literary festival that takes place annually during the last weekend of April in Port of Spain. Inaugurated in 2011, it is the first major literary festival in the southern Caribbean and largest literary festival in the Anglophone Caribbean. A registered non-profit company, the festival has as its title sponsor the National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago (NGC). Other sponsors and partners include First Citizens Bank, One Caribbean Media (OCM), who sponsor the associated OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, CODE, and the Commonwealth Foundation.
B. Kojo Laing or Bernard Kojo Laing was a Ghanaian novelist and poet, whose writing is characterised by its hybridity, whereby he uses Ghanaian Pidgin English and vernacular languages alongside standard English. His first two novels in particular – Search Sweet Country (1986) and Woman of the Aeroplanes (1988) – were praised for their linguistic originality, both books including glossaries that feature the author's neologisms as well as Ghanaian words.
Atukwei John Okai was a Ghanaian poet, cultural activist and academic. He was Secretary-General of the Pan African Writers' Association, and a president of the Ghana Association of Writers. His early work was published under the name John Okai. With his poems rooted in the oral tradition, he is generally acknowledged to have been the first real performance poet to emerge from Africa, and his work has been called "also politically radical and socially conscious, one of his great concerns being Pan-Africanism". His performances on radio and television worldwide include an acclaimed 1975 appearance at Poetry International at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, where he shared the stage with US poets Stanley Kunitz and Robert Lowell, and Nicolás Guillén of Cuba.
Mabel Dove Danquah was a Gold Coast-born journalist, political activist, and creative writer, one of the earliest women in West Africa to work in these fields. As Francis Elsbend Kofigah notes in relation to Ghana's literary pioneers, "before the emergence of such strong exponents of literary feminism as Efua Sutherland and Ama Ata Aidoo, there was Mabel Dove Danquah, the trail-blazing feminist." She used various pseudonyms in her writing for newspapers from the 1930s: "Marjorie Mensah" in The Times of West Africa; "Dama Dumas" in the African Morning Post; "Ebun Alakija" in the Nigerian Daily Times; and "Akosua Dzatsui" in the Accra Evening News. Entering politics in the 1950s before Ghana's independence, she became the first woman to be elected a member of any African legislative assembly. She created the awareness and the need for self-governance through her works.
Margaret Yvonne Busby,, Hon. FRSL, also known as Nana Akua Ackon, is a Ghanaian-born publisher, editor, writer and broadcaster, resident in the UK. She was Britain's youngest and first black female book publisher when she and Clive Allison (1944–2011) co-founded the London-based publishing house Allison and Busby in the 1960s. She edited the anthology Daughters of Africa (1992), and its 2019 follow-up New Daughters of Africa. She is a recipient of the Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature. In 2020 she was voted one of the "100 Great Black Britons". In 2021, she was honoured with the London Book Fair Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2023, Busby was named as president of English PEN.
Deborah Ahenkorah is a Ghanaian educator and activist, co-founder and CEO of Golden Baobab, a social enterprise that aims to promote African literature for children, awarding the annual Golden Baobab Prize. She studied at Bryn Mawr College, and has been named by the Echoing Green Fellowship as "one of the most innovative contributions to change in today's world." In 2013, Ahenkorah was part of the New Voices Fellowship at the Aspen Institute.
Meri Nana-Ama Danquah is a Ghanaian-American writer, editor, journalist and public speaker, whose name at birth was Mildred Mary Nana-Ama Boakyewaa Brobby. She is best known for her 1998 memoir Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman's Journey Through Depression. Her short story "When a Man Loves a Woman" was shortlisted for the 2022 AKO Caine Prize for African Writing.
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.
Esi Sutherland-Addy is a Ghanaian academic, writer, educationalist, and human rights activist. She is a professor at the Institute of African Studies, where she has been senior research fellow, head of the Language, Literature, and Drama Section, and associate director of the African Humanities Institute Program at the University of Ghana. She is credited with more than 60 publications in the areas of education policy, higher education, female education, literature, theatre and culture, and serves on numerous committees, boards and commissions locally and internationally. She is the first daughter of writer and cultural activist Efua Sutherland.
Ayesha Harruna Attah is a Ghanaian-born fiction writer. She lives in Senegal.
Elizabeth-Irene Baitie is a Ghanaian writer of fiction for young adults.
The Mbaasem Foundation is a foundation established by Ghanaian writer Ama Ata Aidoo in Accra, Ghana, in 2000. It is a nonprofit foundation dedicated to supporting and promoting the work of African women writers, to "establish and maintain a writing place for women". In 2002 the rented headquarters of the foundation was "likened to the transformation of Ernest Hemingway's home in Chicago into a literary haven and museum". The Foundation states its mission as being "To support the development and sustainability of African women writers and their artistic output", and as its goal: "To create an enabling environment for women to write, tell and publish their stories."
Mary Asabea Ashun is a Ghanaian-Canadian educator, author and researcher; she is principal of Ghana International School in Accra, Ghana.
Joanne C. Hillhouse is a creative writer, journalist, producer and educator from Antigua and Barbuda. Her writing encompasses novels, short stories, poetry and children's books, and she has contributed to many publications in the Caribbean region as well as internationally, among them the anthologies Pepperpot (2014) and New Daughters of Africa (2019). Hillhouse's books include the poetry collection On Becoming (2003), the novellas The Boy from Willow Bend (2003) and Dancing Nude in the Moonlight (2004), the children's books Fish Outta Water and With Grace, the novel Oh Gad! (2012), and the young adult novel Musical Youth (2014), which was runner-up for the Burt Award for Caribbean Literature. She was named by Literary Hub as one of "10 Female Caribbean Authors You Should Know". An advocate for the development of the arts in Antigua and Barbuda, she founded the Wadadli Youth Pen Prize in 2004.
Ghanaian literature is literature produced by authors from Ghana or in the Ghanaian diaspora. It starts with a long oral tradition, was influenced heavily by western literature during colonial rule, and became prominent with a post-colonial nationalist tradition in the mid-20th century. The current literary community continues with a diverse network of voices both within and outside the country, including in film, theatre, and modern digital formats such as blogging.
References
- ↑ "Burt Award Winners". Ghana Book Trust. Archived from the original on 1 December 2017. Retrieved 28 November 2017.
- ↑ "CODE Announces The Winner of The Burt Award For African Young Adult Literature All Stars". Burt Literary Awards. Archived from the original on 24 July 2019. Retrieved 28 November 2017.
- ↑ "An Interview With Ghanaian Writer Ruby Goka". Geosi Reads. 2 August 2011. Archived from the original on 1 December 2017. Retrieved 28 November 2017.
- ↑ "Full List of Winners at 2017 Forty Under 40 Awards". Kasapa FM Online. Archived from the original on 28 January 2018. Retrieved 28 November 2017.
- ↑ "40 Ghanaians Leave For YALI Programme in US". Citi FM Online. 22 June 2017. Archived from the original on 1 December 2017. Retrieved 28 November 2017.
- ↑ "Book Review: In The Middle of Nowhere". Graphic Online. Archived from the original on 24 July 2019. Retrieved 28 November 2017.
- ↑ risefeministbooksadmin (2024-01-15). "2023 Rise: A Feminist Book Project List". Rise: A Feminist Book Project for Ages 0-18. Retrieved 2024-09-30.
- ↑ "Ghana Association of Writers releases shortlisted winners for 2022 literary awards - MyJoyOnline". www.myjoyonline.com. 2022-11-01. Retrieved 2024-09-30.
- ↑ "100 Notable African Books of 2022". brittlepaper.com. Retrieved 2024-09-30.
- ↑ "Ten of the Best: Books from the Commonwealth – Books For Keeps". booksforkeeps.co.uk. Retrieved 2024-09-30.
- ↑ EVEN WHEN YOUR VOICE SHAKES | Kirkus Reviews.
- ↑ Yayra, Goka, Ruby. "Even When Your Voice Shakes". School Library Journal. Retrieved 2024-09-30.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ↑ "2020". www.ibby.org. Retrieved 2024-09-30.
- ↑ "CABA 2019 Winners | Center for African Studies". cfas.howard.edu. Retrieved 2024-09-30.
- ↑ "Ghana Association of Writers committed to promoting literary excellence". GhanaWeb. 24 November 2019. Retrieved 30 September 2024.
- ↑ "Digital Story Launch & Awards Ceremony for Inspire Us Authors". WorldReader. Retrieved 30 September 2024.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ↑ "Kofi Awoonor Literary Prize 2018 Archives -". 2019-03-05. Retrieved 2024-09-30.
- ↑ "The 2018 CODE Burt Award for Young Adult African Literature Goes to Kenya's Kinyanjui Kombani". brittlepaper.com. Retrieved 2024-09-30.
- ↑ Murua, James (2017-09-08). "Burt Awards 2017 All Stars unveiled" . Retrieved 2024-09-30.
- ↑ "2017 Nominees". 40under40awards. Archived from the original on 24 July 2019. Retrieved 29 November 2017.
- ↑ "Shortlisted Entries For 2017 Ghana Writers Announced". Ghana News Agency. Archived from the original on 1 December 2017. Retrieved 29 November 2017.
- ↑ "CODE's Burt Award For African Young Adult Literature". CODE Burt Literary Awards. Archived from the original on 24 July 2019. Retrieved 29 November 2017.
- ↑ "Celebrating the Winners of the 2015-16 Burt Award for African Literature". CODE Burt Literary Awards. Archived from the original on 24 July 2019. Retrieved 29 November 2017.
- ↑ "Ghanaian Writers Pick Awards". Modern Ghana. Archived from the original on 1 December 2017. Retrieved 29 November 2017.
- ↑ "Burt Awards 2013 Picture Gallery". Ghana Book Trust. Archived from the original on 1 December 2017. Retrieved 29 November 2017.
- ↑ "Burt Award For African Literature - 2011 Winners For Ghana". Accra Books And Things. 28 February 2012. Archived from the original on 1 December 2017. Retrieved 29 November 2017.