African Writing

14/10/2023

“Don’t feel that you have to tailor your literature a particular way to please any school of ideology. There will emerge in its own right, effortlessly, some kind of ideological direction which is a reflection of your thinking and you want your thinking, above all.”

- Some words of advice to young writers from 1986 literature laureate Wole Soyinka.

Playwright and political activist Soyinka started writing from an early age and published his first plays in 1963. In total, he has published about 20 literary works in various genres such as drama and poetry.

All his plays have strong poetical elements and many also have political elements. He is known for being outspoken about his home country, Nigeria’s, politics and has been imprisoned for his criticism of the government. During the civil war in Nigeria in the middle of the 1960s he was drawn into the struggle for liberty because of his opposition to violence and terror.

Soyinka’s collection of poems ‘A Shuttle in the Crypt’ was written during the writer’s two years in prison from 1967 to 69. They are poems about mental survival, human contact, anger and forgiveness. A few years after being released from prison (1972), Soyinka published ‘The Man Died: Prison Notes’, a novel with his prison notes that recounts how he was tortured. His two-year imprisonment was an experience that drastically affected his outlook on life and literary work.

The 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Soyinka “who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence.”

Read more about Wole Soyinka: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1986/soyinka/facts/

13/10/2023

Congratulations to on winning the 2023 Nigeria Prize for Literature with his amazing book, GRIT.

Job well done, The Nigeria Prize for Literature

21/07/2023

"Do not be in a hurry to rush into the pleasures of the world like the young antelope who danced herself lame when the main dance was yet to come."

- Chinua Achebe

20/07/2023

Congratulations 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾

The wait is over!

Here are the 11 plays that have secured their place on the longlist.

Congratulations to all the writers who have made it to the longlist!

14/07/2023

Skirt
By Niyi Osundare

Come,
Sweetheart
Come tonight

Let’s meet in the elbow
Of the street
Skip all care

Breach all walls
Jump over the gutter
Of the moon

Come, sweetheart
Don’t forget to come
In our favourite skirt

Read more of Osundare's poems here: https://www.african-writing.com/Sep/osundare.htm

13/07/2023

Happy 89th birthday to a literary icon, Wole Soyinka!

04/07/2023

"Words cannot be swallowed back. When they are as foul and bitter as the nastiest vomit, you can’t even try. For as long as she could remember, Lerato had desperately wanted to liberate her mother from her little world."
- Gertrude Makhaya, Four Women

Read here: https://www.african-writing.com/five/gertrudemakhaya.htm

26/06/2023

Agbo Areo played an important role in the promotion of African Literature, and will be missed dearly.

Date of his funeral has been fixed for July 26th to 28th, 2023.

Watch his conversation with Chuma Nwokolo few weeks before his passing:

The famous Pacesetters Series published by Macmillan in the '70s and '80s had 130 young adult novels which sold across Africa in hundreds of thousands of cop...

24/06/2023

Join the premiere for Agbo Areo's final conversation on YouTube where he talks about his role in the creation of Macmillan's Pacesetters series:

The famous Pacesetters Series published by Macmillan in the '70s and '80s had 130 young adult novels which sold across Africa in hundreds of thousands of cop...

24/06/2023

https://nwokolo.com/y/agbo-areo-pacesetters-pioneer-1940-2023/

When a boxing champion takes the gold, his manager is standing ringside to share in the accolades and fame. Editors, even of the most iconic books, are a more invisible tribe. Yet, some denizens of literature bestride both the editorial and the authorial. Agbo Areo was such a one, an editor and a writer with a significant influence on a generation of readers. And writers.

Agbo Areo had ‘disappeared’ for decades, but back in March 2023, I felt a strong desire to track him down. He was an important figure in African literature for his role in the creation of the Macmillan Pacesetter series. Not only had he designed our most influential Young Adult pan-continental series, but he had also written the very first book that templated the series. He was therefore an author and editor who had been active in the Nigerian publishing hotbed of Lagos/Ibadan. Yet, for many years I had heard no word from him.

I started my search for Agbo Areo by asking people who should know: my writer, editor, and publisher friends across Lagos and Ibadan. I got no joy. Mr. Areo had apparently disappeared into a very private life, post-retirement. I talked to my cousin, Irene Ubah, who had originally introduced me to him. But she had lost touch with him. Tade Ipadeola, my touchstone poet for Ibadan affairs, had not seen him either. Okey Ndibe’s trusty Ibadan tentacles came back negative.

I tried online, of course, and the only reference to Agbo Areo took me to what felt like the longest street in Ibadan. As I drove down this potholed habitat of bookmakers and sellers of printing materials, I got many confident directions from people who should have frankly confessed that they had no clue who I was talking about. As I drove deeper into this bowel of Ibadan I happened upon medieval scenes meet for Yoruba Nollywood, but as for the old man I sought, I found not a trace. At the back of my mind was the dread that nature had happened to Mr. Areo. He had to be in his 80s, and as a series that flowered in the ’70s and ’80s, many of my fellow Pacesetter writers had already joined the guild of literary ancestors.
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When a boxing champion takes the gold, his manager is standing ringside to share in the accolades and fame. Editors, even of the most iconic books, are a more invisible tribe. Yet, some denizens of literature bestride both the editorial and the authorial. Agbo Areo was such a one, an editor and a wr

24/06/2023

"You can’t believe in love at first sight unless you’ve felt it yourself. Unless you’ve stood at the door watching him come up the stairs, leather jacket on his masculine shoulders, a cigarette smouldering in his lips, and that wide-eyed smile he reserves for you. You understand the concept of now, of living now and only in this moment, all you have is now, now stretching out into the anticipation of an evening."

Arja Salafranca, Cleo and Nic

Read here: https://www.african-writing.com/five/arjasalafranca.htm