Meet the authors
Efe Paul Azino
Widely regarded as one of Nigeria's leading performance poets, Efe has been a headline performer at many of the nation's premier performance poetry venues. He is the director of the Lagos International Poetry Festival, director of poetry at the annual Lagos Book and Art Festival, and coordinator of spoken word poetry at the Open Door Series' International Cultural Exchange and the Lagos Black Heritage Festival. Efe Paul is the producer of Nigeria’s first spoken word poetry theatre production, Finding ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ, and has performed at Johannesburg Arts Alive Festival, Ake Book and Arts Festival, Lagos Book and Arts Festival, Lights Camera Africa Film Festival, and amongst others. He is an Osiwa Poetry Residency Fellow. , published by Farafina Books, is his first collection.
Dami Ajayi
Dami Ajayi is a medical doctor, writer and co-publisher of . Daybreak, his electronic 'chapbook', became a cult classic and his first volume of poems, Clinical Blues (WriteHouse Collective, 2014), selected as one of the best books in the last five years by This Is Africa (TIA), was recently shortlisted for the 2015 ANA Prize for Poetry. His book, music and film reviews have appeared in The Guardian, Wawa Review of Books and OlisaTV. He is currently working on a novel about contemporary Lagos and is studying to become a psychiatrist.
A Igoni Barrett
A Igoni Barrett was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in 1979 and lives in Lagos. He is a winner of the , the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center for African Writers and Artists fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center residency. His short story collection, t, was published in 2013. In 2014 he was named on the Africa39 list of sub-Saharan African writers under 40. His first novel, , was published in 2015 in Nigeria (Farafina Books) and the UK (Chatto & Windus), and was long-listed for the inaugural FT/OppenheimerFunds Emerging Voices awards.
Dike Chukwumerije
Dike Chukwumerije has a Law degree from the University of Abuja and a Masters degree from SOAS, University of London. He is a member of the Abuja Literary Society (ALS), a vibrant Abuja-based literary group that holds meetings every week, and the winner of the 2013 Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) Prize for Prose Fiction for his novel, Urichindere. An award-winning performance poet, he has won several slam competitions in Nigeria, including the ALS Grand Slam and the maiden edition of The African Poet (Nigeria) National Slam Competition. He’s an active blogger and posts his performance poetry online.
Abubakar Adam Ibrahim
Abubakar Adam Ibrahim is a Nigerian writer and journalist. His debut short story collection (Parresia Publishers, 2012) was long-listed for the Etisalat Prize for Literature in 2014. The title story was shortlisted for the prestigious in 2013. Ibrahim has won the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ African Performance Prize and the Amatu Braide Prize for Prose. He is a Gabriel Garcia Marquez Fellow (2013) and a Civitella Ranieri Fellow (2015). He was listed by the Hay Festival in the Africa39 list of the most promising sub-Sahara African writers under the age of 40. He judged the Writivism Short Story Prize in 2014 and is a judge for the Short Story Day Africa Prize and the Etisalat Flash Fiction Prize in 2015. His debut novel was published in Nigeria in November 2015 (Parresia Publishers) and will be published in the UK in June 2016 by Cassava Republic Press.
Eghosa Imasuen
Eghosa Imasuen, a Nigerian novelist and short story writer. His first novel, To Saint Patrick, an alternate history and murder mystery about Nigeria’s civil war, was published by Farafina in 2008. His second novel, Fine Boys (Farafina, 2011) chronicles the voices of Nigeria’s post-Biafra generation. Imasuen was a facilitator at the 2013 edition of the Farafina Trust Adichie Creative Writing Workshop. He is currently the Chief Operations Officer at Kachifo Limited, publishers of the Farafina imprint.
Elnathan John
Elnathan John is a Nigerian writer, and one of Nigeria’s most well-known satirists. He has twice been shortlisted for the prestigious Caine Prize for African Writing. His writing has been published in Per Contra, Evergreen Review and Chimurenga's The Chronic. He is a 2015 Civitella Ranieri Fellow and lives in Abuja, Nigeria. His debut novel, , was published by Cassava Republic Press in Nigeria in November 2015 and will be released in the UK (Cassava Republic) and the US (Grove Atlantic) in Spring 2016.
Toni Kan
Toni Kan holds both MA and BA degrees in English Literature. He worked as a journalist for five years and rose to the position of editor at the age 26, before moving into banking and telecoms. Kan is the author of four works of fiction and poetry including the short story collection . Toni Kan was, until recently, editor of the Sunday Sun’s literary supplement, Revue. Toni is the publisher of and a managing partner at Radi8. His forthcoming book Carnivorous City will be published by Cassava Republic Press in 2016 in Nigeria and the UK.
Adoabi Tricia Nwaubani
Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani is a novelist, journalist, essayist and humorist. Her debut novel I Do Not Come to You by Chance is set in the intriguing world of Nigerian 419 email scammers. It won the 2010 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book (Africa), a 2010 Betty Trask First Book award, and was named by the Washington Post as one of the Best Books of the Year. Nwaubani is currently the only contemporary writer from Nigeria to launch a global career while still fully based in her home country. Her frank and provocative essays have been featured in the New York Times, CNN, The Guardian and The New Yorker. She writes a regular column for the section.
Chiagozie Fred Nwonwu
Chiagozie Fred Nwonwu (Mazi Nwonwu) is the Managing Editor of , a Nigerian lifestyle and entertainment website. He is also co-founder and co-editor of , a web-based speculative fiction magazine that caters to writers of African descent. His essays have appeared in TIA, Daily Times, and The Guardian Nigeria. His short fiction has appeared in Story Time, Sentinel Nigeria, Saraba and African Writer. Nwonwu is part of two groundbreaking speculative fiction anthologies, AfroSF and Lagos 2060, and he contributed a science fiction short story to It Wasn’t Exactly Love, a pan-African anthology on sex and sexuality published in September 2015 by Farafina.
Lola Shoneyin
Lola Shoneyin's work includes three books of poems: So All the Time I Was Sitting on an Egg (1997), Song of a Riverbird (2002) and For the Love of Flight (2010) and two children's books: Mayowa and the Masquerades (2010) and Iyaji, the Housegirl (2016). Her debut novel, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives (Cassava Republic Press, 2010; Serpent’s Tail, 2011), was long-listed for the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction and won the PEN Oakland 2011 Josephine Miles Literary Award. After teaching both in Nigeria and the UK for many years, Shoneyin now lives in Lagos. She is the Director of the Ake Arts and Book Festival and of the Book Buzz Foundation, a non-governmental organisation whose main aims are promoting literacy through the creation of reading programmes for children, developing reading spaces and organising the . In April 2014, Shoneyin was named on the Hay Festival's Africa39 list of 39 Sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define trends in African literature.
Titilope Sonuga
Titilope Sonuga is an award winning poet, writer & performer based in Lagos, Nigeria. She is the author of two poetry collections, Down To Earth (2011) and Abscess (2014), and a spoken word album, Mother Tongue (2013). She performed at the first spoken word showcase at the Chinua Achebe Colloquium on Africa at Brown University alongside world renowned poets and was selected from over 200 poets to meet the iconic American poet and activist, Maya Angelou. Titilope performed a stirring inauguration poem at the swearing-in of President Muhammadu Buhari in May 2015; a historic moment for the country and the first time a poet had ever been invited to perform at a Nigerian presidential inauguration ceremony. She is currently the ambassador for the Intel® She Will Connect initiative in Nigeria; a program that aims to close the online gender gap by empowering and training women and girls across the world. Her undeniably visceral and compelling style of poetry and her work as a performer and facilitator on the local and global stage makes her one of Nigeria's leading performance poets.
Kα»Μlá Tubα»Μsún
Kα»Μlá Tubα»Μsún is a linguist and writer. He’s an active blogger who was recently nominated for the 2015 CNN/Multichoice African Journalist of the Year award. He has also translated others from English to Yorùbá and Yorùbá to English. His 'chapbook' (2015) is free for download on Saraba Magazine. Kola has also published non-fiction, including in the Jalada Magazine’s Language Issue, and Speaking the Machine, published in Farafina Magazine.
Wana Udobang
Wana is a broadcaster, writer, poet, filmmaker and curator. She graduated from the University for The Creative Arts with a first class degree in journalism. In the UK, she has worked as a freelance features producer for the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ World Service and Resonance FM. She honed her skills as a researcher whilst working for Wise Buddah, Above The Title and Somethin’ Else productions. Wana worked as a radio presenter and producer at 92.3 Inspiration FM in Lagos, Nigeria for six years and hosts the CSR television show Airtel Touching Lives. She is a freelance writer and contributor for Aljazeera Online, Huffington post and Bella Naija. As a short fiction writer and an alumnus of the Farafina Creative Writers Workshop, her short stories have been published in anthologies and online journals. She is a performance poet and her spoken word album titled Dirty Laundry was released in 2013. Wana is the producer of the documentary Sensitive Skin, a film about the skin condition Psoriasis. She also wrote and directed the web series Room313 about people going through trauma. Her most recent short film is titled Shrink.
Jumoke Verissimo
Jumoke Verissimo is a writer and poet. She is the author of an award-winning poetry collection I Am Memory and recently published The Birth of Illusion (Fullpoint Publications, 2015). She is a 2012 recipient of the Chinua Achebe Centre fellowship.
