For those of you unable to attend the October 2 web event “Wole Soyinka and Chris Abani in Conversation,” a recording of the event is now on the Program of African Studies YouTube channel. Subscribe to our channel for Program of African Studies events, lectures, interviews and more!
About the event:
A Yoruba born in Western Nigeria and educated in Ibadan and Leeds University in England, Wole Soyinka was the first African to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. He has authored over forty works in the medium of plays, novels, poetry, essays, and biographies, many of which have received world-wide translations as well as theater performances. He is active on artistic, academic and Human Rights organizations such as the International Theatre Institute, UNESCO, and the International Parliament of Writers. He is the recipient of numerous academic and national honors and holds traditional titles in his own country. Wole Soyinka continues to lecture extensively within Nigeria and internationally and currently holds positions as Emeritus Professor at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria; Hutchins Fellow, Harvard University, USA; and Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge, UK.
The Lion and the Jewel and Death and the King’s Horseman are among his most celebrated plays while his poems are collected in Idanre and Other Poems, Mandela’s Earth and Other Poems, and Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known. His autobiographical works encompassing childhood, youth, and adult political and literary activities comprise Aké: The Years of Childhood, Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years, and You Must Set Forth at Dawn. His corpus of prose fiction – The Interpreters and Season of Anomie – will be augmented in November 2020 with his latest novel Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth.
He is married, with children, and lives in Ijegba, Abeokuta, Ogun State. More at wolesoyinkalecture.org.
Chris Abani is an acclaimed novelist and poet. His most recent books are The Secret History of Las Vegas, The Face: A Memoir, and Sanctificum. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN/Hemingway Award, an Edgar Prize, a Ford USA Artists Fellowship, the PEN Beyond the Margins Award, a Prince Claus Award, the Hurston Wright Legacy Award, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship, among many honors. Born in Nigeria, he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Board of Trustees Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies at Northwestern University. He lives in Chicago. More at chrisabani.com.