Literature enthusiasts converge on Enugu for book convention

The 13th outing of the ‘Coal City Book Convention’, celebrated yearly in Enugu to promote the literary arts, will hold on Saturday, June 25, at Peekay Garden.

Organised by the Delta Book Club, a subsidiary of the book publishing outfit Delta Publications (Nigeria) Limited, this year’s celebration will be spiced with a drama performance, Our Papa’s Land, followed by a reading by Professor Mike Iloeje from his new book, Rape – My Beloved Country, lamenting the challenges of survival in the Nigerian state, and a presentation of the new edition of the company’s quarterly magazine ‘The Writer’.

The main attraction will be the conferment of the yearly Olaudah Equiano Life-Award on three notable Nigerian achievers “who personified the apex of creative excellence in their chosen disciplines”, namely noted Paediatrician Professor Bede Ibe, scientist Professor Josephine Ezekwesili- Ofili and politician-turned-novelist Commissioner Ukwu Rocks Emma.

Dillibe Onyeama, President of The Delta Book Club, told The Guardian, “we’ve put together an elaborate package of celebration that we hope will defy the notoriety of “the unlucky 13th” and give inspiration to our youth in the promotion of the reading culture.”

Speaking on what has kept the book convention going after 13 years, he said: “I shouldn’t say it’s a matter of ‘what keeps you coming back’, but what ‘keeps you going’. It’s a matter of perseverance. You’re on to a good thing, so you keep going – based on a policy of continuous improvement. You’re out to promote creative talent – which is what literature is all about.”

Looking at the motivation to start a book convention, Onyeama added, “I am motivated by the inspiration inherent in both writing and publishing. Both complement each other. You write fiction to travel – albeit astral travel – and study the intricacies of character and conflict.”

Looking at how visitors manage to navigate the sheer enormity of the convention, he said they are drawn to book activities by the magnetism of the rich varieties of literary arts on show: books, drama performance, poetry readings, prize giving, and fine refreshments. “They will yearn to one day be among the beneficiaries being celebrated from that talent hunt, because everybody has a story to tell by Divine Right. It’s the way you tell it, and the publisher’s skills in marketing it, that determines one’s chances of hitting the big time,” he remarked.

Having hosted book conventions in the different regions of the country, he believes no part of the country is hard to capture. “You are in a creative genre, so you need to apply creative strategies to catch the fishes, so to speak. But in each part of the country, there has to be a hero with whom the indigenes can identify. In the Southeast the hero is Olaudah Equiano (that is – as far as my company is concerned. In the west it is Amos Tutuola. In the North it is Abubakar Gimba. The award for literary excellence is anchored on their legendary names. They were great storytellers. How you capture audiences for fiction, which is arguably the most creative genre in literature, depends on the marketing strategies applied by the publisher. We have recorded full houses at Freedom Park, Lagos, at the Nigerian University Commission (NUC) in Abuja, and have been similarly rewarded in many venues in Enugu. I can tell you, truthfully, that we have never experienced anything like an empty hall. That would apply only through lack of proper organisation.”

He added, “all the audiences in the relevant states have been as supportive as one another. All of Nigeria’s ethnic groups have a rich tradition of story-telling; and it is for the publisher to ‘fish well’, record good catches, and use his best marketing strategies to reach a good market audience. For instance, it was Akintunde Oyajobi’s novel, Nostalgia, which won the maiden outing of The Abubakar Gimba Literary Award in Abuja.

On Enugu, which is rarely a setting in Nigerian Literature, he said it has features that make the city prime for fiction.

According to him, “in Enugu, as the traditional headquarters of the genus Igbo, there is a vibrant social life; and the ubiquitous nature of the Igbo man as a born trader exposes to situations that are ripe for imaginative flair to be expressed through fiction literature.”

The essence of Enugu is captured in Story of an African God, which is about his grandfather, “who ruled with a rod of iron in the colonial days, recorded legendary wealth, and brought education and Christianity to his empire Agbaja – which is the largest Igbo sub-clan.”

He also talked about Equiano, the legendary figure, who inspired the birth of a lasting reading culture in Enugu. “He was the first black person, after securing freedom from slavery, to write and publishing a book in the history of literature.”

On the book he is currently working on? He said: “As for my own pen-pushing efforts, I usually work on two or three ideas at the same time based on plots conceived some 10 years before. I have three I am almost concluding – two novels, and one non-fiction. I will first try and get them published off-shore, since most of my 28 published books so far have been published in Europe and the US.”