Literature

One of Nigeria’s finest writer-scholars, Joe Ushie was born shortly before Nigeria’s independence to his agrarian parents at Akorshie, Bendi in the Obanliku Local Government Area of Cross River State.

In Nigeria, bloggers have been arrested and even killed. Visual performer, Atiku Jelili spent days in jail for his performance while Nengi Ilagha, a writer, spent months in jail for his artistic work that spoke against his...

The mediation of the first coming of GLS by Yemi Ogunbiyi, Femi Osofisan, Odia Ofeimun and G. G. Darah was not a romantic experience. This has also been what the present run of the series encountered last year.

Only in the most literal sense, perhaps, but no! Recall that in the play, Godot never arrives, whereas the prize will not only be won (by me, I hope!) but declared to have been won in October, a mere month away.

In all Nwagwu exudes an unbending hope in his country. This is one grand theme that one finds in I Am Kagara. Nigeria is like a stubborn child that its parents cannot but love. Nwagwu’s book could have been easily entitled ‘I Am Nigeria!’

The competition is free to enter. This year’s winner is Trinidadian writer and artist, Ingrid Persaud, who calls Barbados home. She won with her story, ‘The Sweet Sop.’

The Ebedi International Writers Residency was established in 2010 by Dr. Wale Okediran as a retreat for African writers the world over searching for a serene and comfortable environment to research and work on their arts.

But a former Abuja chapter chairman of Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), Dr. Seyi Adigun, thinks otherwise, arguing, “Prizes are meant to be won, not to be shared.”

First, there is the challenge, actually a moral crisis, of many poets, especially the younger ones, who seem more interested in the fruits than the labour of poetry. And for them the fruits can only be one thing: literary prizes.

"Well, I'm told that they're not," he said in a 2005 interview with NPR. "What they are is about the privacy of all of us, and the difficulty of our own thinking," he said. Yet "they are, I think, accessible if anyone cares to access them."

Nigerian Writers Series 2 books, dedicated to children’s literature, are out. It is a culmination of over a year’s process of competitive call, sifting through manuscripts and arriving at a group of three adjudged publishable by the series editors.

The poem entitled “Corruption blues” takes a look at the endemic corruption that has destroyed the nation’s moral fabric and body-politic. While the leaders themselves are enmeshed in it.