Description:

A viritual event where authors Wole Soyinka and Chris Abani will have a discussion.

Friday, October 2, 2020, 12pm (CST), 6pm (WAT)
Registration is free, but attendees must be registered to receive an active Zoom link to the event.

A Yoruba born in Western Nigeria and educated in Ibadan, and Leeds Universiy 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 theatre performances. He is active on artistic, academic and Human Rights organisations such as the International Theatre Institute, UNESCO, the International Parliament of Writers etc. He is recipient of numerous academic and national honours, 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; Death and the King’s Horseman are among his most celebrated plays while his poems are collected in  IDANRE; MANDELA’S EARTH and Other Poems; SAMARKAND and Other Markets I Have Known. His autobiographical works encompassing childhood, youth and adult political and literary activities comprise : AKE, The Years of Childhood; IBADAN The Penkelemes Years; YOU MUST SET FORTH AT DAWN.  His corpus of prose fiction – The Interpreters; Season of Anomie - will be augmented in November 2020 with his latest novel - CHRONICLES from the Land of the Happiest People in the World (BookCraft).

He is married, with children, and lives in Ijegba, Abeokuta, Ogun State.

More at http://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 http://www.chrisabani.com