Sade Adeniran | |
---|---|
Born | London, UK |
Nationality | Nigerian |
Occupation | Novelist |
Notable work | Imagine This |
Awards | 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book (African region) |
Website | www |
Sade Adeniran (born 1960s) is a Nigerian novelist whose debut novel, Imagine This, won the 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book in Africa. [1] Imagine This was originally self-published by the author. Based in London, [2] she is also a filmmaker. [3]
Sade Adeniran was born in London, England, to Nigerian parents, and at the age of eight was taken back to her father's village in Nigeria, [2] spending her formative years living with her grandmother in Idogun, Ondo State, before returning to the UK. [4] [5]
Adeniran earned degrees in Media and English from Plymouth University and also studied in the US as an exchange student at the University of Massachusetts. [6] She began her writing career with a radio play written for a final-year university project and entitled Memories of a Distant Past; she submitted "on a whim" to the BBC, and it was produced in BBC Radio 4's "First Bite" Festival. [5] She subsequently wrote other theatre pieces, having her work performed in London at the Lyric Theatre, the Bush Theatre and the Riverside Studios.[ citation needed ]
She was employed as a business change consultant, while also working for five years on her first novel, Imagine This, describing the book's route to publication in the Brunel University newsletter Brunel Link in 2009: "Like most writers who dream of seeing their book in print, I went down the traditional route of sending my manuscript to publishers and agents but the responses were not positive – there didn't seem to be room in the marketplace for a story of a young girl growing up in rural Nigeria. After years of trying to repress my dream of becoming a published author, I finally plucked up the courage to do something. I realised that if I didn't believe in myself, no-one else would." [5] Having left her job, she decided to self-publish and in order to sell the 1100 copies she had printed, she created a website and dedicated herself to a marketing campaign that included appearances on local radio and television. [7]
Told through her diaries, Imagine This chronicles 10 years of the life of Lola, who is sent as a nine-year-old from her home in London to live with relatives in Nigeria. [8] In answer to whether the story is autobiographical, Adeniran says her response is always: "'It is and it isn't'. Some things in the book are based on real incidents. That village was where I grew up, but what happens to the character Lola is not what happened to me." [2] The novel won the 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book (African region), and was shortlisted for the World Book Day "Books to Talk About" award. [5] It was published by Cassava Republic Press in 2011. [9]
As a filmmaker, Adeniran is currently developing an adapted version of her novel, which reached the second round of the Sundance Screenwriters' Lab, [10] [11] and won the British Urban Film Festival Award for Best Script Talent. [3] Her second film project is entitled A Mother's Journey, [12] and she is working on others. [13] [14]
She is a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa , edited by Margaret Busby. [15]
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