Favourite Five: Deborah Ahenkorah

To start off the month of June we bring you Favourite Five by Deborah Ahenkorah. Deborah is the Executive Director of The Golden Baobab Prize, an annual literary prize aimed at inspiring African Children's Literature. Her interview will be up on the blog next week.

She had this to say about her choices: "I read a lot of British and American literature. So the Enid Blytons of course, the Sweet Valley series, the Babysitters Club, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, etc. I also got into the Harlequins and Mills and Boons at some point, but let’s not talk about those, ahem. There was also a time when I loved short stories. My school library had a whole bunch of American literature readers with all these wonderful short stories that I could never get enough of. The result of all these books I read was that I always dreamed up fanciful ideas that were not particularly culturally appropriate. For instance, one time I tried to start a babysitters club, but abeg who was hiring? Or the time I was determined my life’s calling was to be an amateur detective in Accra. When I told my dad he laughed and said, “Eyah, my daughter wants to be a policewoman!”

Artists Grants at 30 Nigeria House

Theatre Royal Stratford East in partnership with New World Nigeria presents 30 Nigeria House.

30 Nigeria House is part of the London 2012 Festival,the spectacular 12-week nationwide celebration running from 21 June until 9 September 2012 bringing together leading artists from across the world with the very best from the UK.

Throughout the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, Theatre Royal Stratford East will be celebrating the diversity of Nigerian culture.

Now, Theatre Royal Stratford East announces an exciting opportunity for new, emerging and existing UK-based artists of Nigerian descent and artists residing in Nigeria.

This new project, 30 Nigeria House, aims to assist 30 artists in developing a new piece of work through an award of £3,000 each. The chosen 30 will attend the launch of the Nigeria Hospitality House (Nigeria House) for the London 2012 Olympic Games and 8 of these artists will participate in an event to share their work as part of Nigeria House, which is located at the theatre in August.

For more information visit 30 Nigeria House or send an email to info@30nigeriahouse.com.

Short Story Day Africa

A celebration of African short fiction. Wednesday 20 June 2012.

For you short story lovers out there, here's something interesting, a way to get involved in the celebration of African short stories. For the ethos of the project, here (below) is what the website states:

Last year on June 21st, the shortest day of the year, we invited you to participate in Short Story Day South, a region-wide celebration of short fiction. This year on June 20th, Short Story Day goes global as once again we encourage everyone of all ages and all genders to do something in honour of the short story. This could be absolutely anything, from running a creative workshop or class, a competition, making a short film or film adaptation of a short story, organising a spoken word night, a reading, an author appearance, a literary salon, or simply picking up a short story and enjoying it, for maybe the first or the hundredth time.

Whatever it is you’re doing, we want to hear about it! Send us details of your event to info@shortstorydayafrica.org, a link to your website (if applicable), and any images you have, and we’ll put it on the brand new Short Story Day website, where you can also find videos of live readings, short story recommendations, and more.

You can also participate just by following Short Story Day Africa on Twitter and Facebook. Read the press release here.

The Lit Bash at Jamaica's Calabash

Jamaica's famous Calabash Festival returned from a one-year hiatus to celebrate the Caribbean island's 50th independence anniversary with a great line-up of authors that included Nigeria's Chimamanda Adichie and the Jamaican National Book Award-winning writer and academic, Orlando Patterson. The festival ended successfully this past weekend, and in this blog post we have collated a number of reports.

Find photos and an ultra-short report over at Andre Bagoo's blog. A snippet:

Like the recently concluded Bocas Lit Fest in Trinidad, the programme featured a wide range of talent from the Caribbean, the diaspora and all over the world. Readers included Adichie, Jamaican writer and poet Olive Senior, Orlando Patterson, Victor Lavalle, and many more.

At Tallawah Magazine you can read about the Panama Canal and mosquitoes, as well as a short interview with Olive Senior and a longer one with Orlando Patterson. About his rise to literary prominence, Patterson says:

I saw my future mainly as a literary person, and I did quite well in England while I was a graduate student. I published my second novel and was publishing stories in all the major newspapers and so on, and I was doing reviews for the Times Literary Supplement. So I saw the trajectory primarily as one as a novelist. But there were times I was rethinking what I should be doing with my life because financially I felt a strong sense of responsibility to help look after my parents.

And finally, from the web pages of Jamaica's most respected newspaper, The Gleaner, comes this bit of info:

The Gleaner asked one of the organisers, Kwame Dawes, if the festival was on track for next year. He responded by saying although they were committed to carrying on the festival, it would be dependent on the funding. He, however, noted that entry for the event would remain free. Dawes said to host the event, approximately US$100,000 (J$8.7 million) is needed. So far, they have had a fund-raising dinner and they have instituted a system where people can donate money to the festival. Dawes said the Jamaica Tourist Board has supported the event and he is hopeful that they will get the required funding to continue the festival, not just from the tourist board, but in general.

1001 Short Stories You Must Read Before You Die

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Over at his blog C. B. James is compiling a list of 1001 short stories some of which can be read online, such as A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert and Eyes of a Blue Dog by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Now, the list is unfinished, Mr James has (at the time of this post) only listed 383 stories. We noticed that the South African Nobel Laureates Nadine Gordimer and J. M. Coetzee both have one story on the list, and that's as far as the African continent is represented.

Here's a description of the project in C. B. James' own words:

1001 Short Stories You Must Read Before You Die is an on-going project devoted to listing not just the best short stories, but the ones actual readers think other readers should read. You'll find most of the great classic short stories listed below along with some you've never heard of. They're all on this list because somebody out there loves them.

Ekbal Baraka [L], Nadine Gordimer [M] and Lola Shoneyin

The highlighted phrases are the main reason for this blog post. We are convinced that there exist a good number of short stories by African writers that deserve to be on the list, and it is up to YOU, the reader, to name these stories in the comments section of the blog. The question you however need to put to yourself before dropping a comment is: Which GREAT short story do I think other readers must read before they die? Answer that question honestly, and then rest easy knowing that your reading taste has been reflected. Regardless of whether the story you chose was written by an African writer.

Looking forward to seeing your choices. You can also name them in the comments of this post.

Years of Nigerian Literature by Prof. Olu Obafemi

As Nigeria celebrates its democracy today, we bring you an interesting excerpt from the keynote address presented at the 2010 Garden City Literary Festival by Professor Olu Obafemi, entitled "Years of Nigerian Literature: Prospects and Problems". Happy Democracy Day!

For a blossoming literary culture to emerge and be sustained in 21st century Nigeria, some of these steps must be taken and maintained.

1. To stimulate and enhance literary creativity, literary competitions and contests, which used to be the practice in the colonial days, need to be resuscitated. The colonialists did it in the 1930s. Even the radios and TVs did it. It should involve all departments of creativity in indigenous and foreign languages—drama, prose, poetry, short stories, film and video, etc. Attractive material rewards should be attached to winning texts. The successful texts should be distributed. Government and corporate bodies must embark on wide distribution of the winning texts in schools and public libraries. The winning texts must be toured and read in many public institutions. If the colonialists did it with the result of an appreciable growth in the writing and reading culture of the time, there is even a greater need for our governments – at the center and in the States – to do so.

"Governments, voluntary agencies and organizations should endow writers fellowships and offer literary prizes to motivate writers to train and write in a sustained and enduring manner...In very specific terms, the National Endowment Draft Bill, which I believe has been with the National Assembly since the year 2004, has not been signed into law."

2. Journals, magazines, newspapers should show greater interest in the publication and serialization of literary texts. The growth of a literary and reading culture have benefited tremendously from the spaces which literary journals and newspapers devoted to works of literature. Black Orpheus, The Horn, Nigeria Magazine, Okike and so on, consciously helped to nurture literature. The example of Dandali which I mentioned earlier is worth emulating. The defunct New Nigerian, Daily Times and many of the more serious newspapers and tabloids in circulation today give prominence to serialized creative works, especially prose and poetry. They also give focus to literature and to book and play reviews. The fresh impetus began with The Guardian and it has been replicated in many of our newspapers. This is a direction to go. Indeed, the print media in Nigeria can move a step further by publishing the final products of the books they serialize after careful editing. To put it firmly, I am suggesting that newspapers should become publishers of literary work, if they wish, and they should ferment robust synergy with the creative arm of the pen fraternity.

"In spite of the provision in our Constitution for funding the arts, and in spite of the robust achievements of Nigerian artists, especially writers on the international scene, there are no grants or fellowships to support creative arts in Nigeria. This is simply unspeakable..."

3. Governments, voluntary agencies and organizations should endow writers fellowships and offer literary prizes to motivate writers to train and write in a sustained and enduring manner. The fellowships should cater for writers’ needs—feeding, accommodation, and honoraria that will enable writers complete creative works in progress with less difficulty than it is now. In very specific terms, the National Endowment Draft Bill, which I believe has been with the National Assembly since the year 2004, has not been signed into law. Government should expedite action on this. In July 2004, during a courtesy visit to the President of the Federation, ANA under my leadership reiterated this fact that Nigeria is perhaps the only country of its stature where such an Endowment does not exist. In spite of the provision in our Constitution for funding the arts, and in spite of the robust achievements of Nigerian artists, especially writers on the international scene, there are no grants or fellowships to support creative arts in Nigeria. This is simply unspeakable and we must constantly remind the Nigerian government to desist from the business of consciously setting aside a mandate of our Cultural Policy, which states, unequivocally and heart-warmingly, at Section 6.1.2., that ‘The State shall promote and encourage the establishment of writers clubs, art clubs, creative centres for encouraging creativity and popularizing the arts’. Section 6.1.3 more germanely and directly states that ‘the State shall support the associations and clubs through government subventions, grants and other forms of assistance.’ Government must stop provoking these high cultural people to resort to rough tactics before getting their rights! The Pen is lethal, I must warn!

4. The tragic issue of piracy and intellectual property crime is still very much with us. Whatever reward that should attend the intellectual labour of writers and other artists are carted away by privates. I appreciate the effort of the Nigerian Copyright Commission in dealing, legally and administratively with the burning, raging crime. I also appreciate the Commission’s partnership with the Reproduction Rights Society with regard to licensing on reprographic work. It is time however, that government committed more resources to dealing with the menace of copyright violations, which like fake drugs, and drug trafficking, is synonymous to pronouncing a death sentence on creative artists. This may be an opposite point to raise the issue of the National Creativity Prize which the Obasanjo Administration introduced in 2000. Its first and only edition was won by the venerable, octogenarian literary patriarch, Chinua Achebe. I recall, with pangs of nostalgia, the remarkable ceremonies that heralded and adorned the Prize. A government that is continuity-conscious would have sustained such a noble gesture of recognition to the creative literati and a promotion of creative excellence. Government should urgently revisit that Prize and revive it.

5. Associations related to literature—writing and reading—should enhance their activities of promotion and nurturing. ANA has created many literary prizes and is collaborating with government and corporate citizens on workshops, prizes endowments and seminars. Others, like Readers Association of Nigeria (RAN), the Literary Society of Nigeria (LSN) and the Association of Non-Fiction Authors of Nigeria (ANFAAN) should work more conscientiously to promote literary awareness, help build a reading and writing culture.

Femi Osofisan (L) and Olu Obafemi

6. Our libraries are virtually dead. There are only very few public libraries in this country. There are fewer reading rooms around. Government should adopt a policy of acquiring at least 5000 copies of one successful creative text of every Nigerian author registered with ANA and distribute them in libraries and reading rooms, which should now be rehabilitated, or rebuilt, as the case may be.

7. The electronic media have been of tremendous help to the growth of creativity in the country, and especially in the north in the past. I have mentioned the role of the FRCN. The radio audience, of the Hausa programmes, for instance, is in millions. This could be replicated in the other languages of Tiv, Fulfulde, Kanuri, Idoma, Okun, Igbirra, Nupe, Yoruba, Igbo, Ijaw, Urhobo, Itsekiri, Igala and so on. Radio Kaduna encouraged literary development by regularly broadcasting poems, short stories, drama sketches and story-telling sessions. The broadcast of their creative works have availed the authors access to wide audiences. My first dramatic text, Pestle in the Mortar, was broadcast on the Radio/Television Kaduna in 1974 and it was of tremendous inspiration for me. The Hausa television drama evolved out of the broadcast of radio plays by FRCN. This tradition of media intervention and propagation of literature has been long established in the Southern parts of the country—Village Headmaster, Cockrow at Dawn, and so on, nudged our creative consciousness. This trend should be re-energized, even now when profit consideration is a foremost preoccupation of the electronic media.

8. Literature is the soul of the society and no subsidy to develop, sustain and nurture it would be excessive. Fifty years after independence, literacy and the reading culture in Nigeria is still dismally poor. We are in a knowledge-driven, global world in which literacy is a critical element of economic development (knowledge, including literary knowledge). All arms of society—government at all levels, cooperate societies and citizens, genuinely rich Nigerians, etc, should commit resources and resource-input to the nation’s creative enterprise and the creative community, if our civilization and humanity will be both enhanced and ennobled indirectly by all involved. Governments should invest in the literature of the nation and grant generous subsidies to literary institutions and literary people in their domains.

—Prof. Olu Obafemi

Richard Ali: On Writing CITY OF MEMORIES

Since my debut novel, City of Memories, was published, I’ve been asked the question "How did you write your book?" by several younger and unpublished friends. Usually this question has nothing to do with the book itself, which most questioners had not read at the time of asking; it has more to do with the imaginable effort and discipline, the regimen and private process they assume must have brought the book to their bookstores.

For me, the story of writing this novel began in 2005, or thereabouts, when I wrote a short story, "Fragments of a Profane Love”—silly title, I know! I was interested in short stories then and had written quite a number, but “Fragments" remains the longest at about 9,000 words. This was at that time when civil strife in Jos, where I live, was getting out of hand and we, yan’Jos, were getting a lot of negative publicity because of the simplistically tagged “ethno-religious” nature of these conflicts. After the media had tagged it, some people began to align themselves with the media rhetoric—beginning to believe they had either ethnic or religious stakes in lopping off the heads of their neighbours. I was at Zaria at that time, a law undergraduate who had just started thinking seriously of writing. So, a thought came to my mind—what if the very first civil crisis in Nigeria had proceeded from a love affair, as the fallout of a private vendetta gone publicly wrong? I thought that would make today’s kill-and-burn heirs really pathetic and foolish—and maybe they might stop to think and change their ways. That was how the story of Ummi, princess of Bolewa, and her two lovers Ahmed and Usman was born. Experimenting with style, I used multiple points-of-view, telling the story from Ummi, Hussena and a few other unnamed characters perspectives. Eventually, when the idea of writing my novel came up, the story in "Fragments" became the bracket around the present novel—for Ummi, dead at the time City of Memories starts, is the mother of one of the main characters and wife of another.

The actual writing of the book started sometime in late 2007, December maybe. I had been about six months out of the University and there wasn’t a whole lot to do. So I decided to write. It was a heady time for me: five of my poems had been published in Chuma Nwokolo’s African Writing months before and Toni Kan, one of the more recognizable names in Nigerian writing, had said I was “a writer to watch!” So, I said, Richard Ali, go write yourself a novel! I didn’t let the fact that I knew nothing about novels—beyond my reading—bother me. I took "Fragments", my short story, printed it out and tried to imagine other complementary stories—a rudimentary structure. When I was satisfied, I started writing. I would average two to three thousand words a day and the very first draft of the novel was completed in six months—let’s just say I felt very pleased with myself. Then I started editing; I believe I went through about three rounds of editing from word one to word last. Then, very confident of myself, I shared it with a few older writer friends. That was when I knew something was wrong, for while most praised my effort, none said it was good. I became frustrated and abandoned the manuscript.

I only went back to the manuscript in late 2010 by which time my friend and fellow British Council Radiophonics participant, Uche Peter Umez, had introduced me to Nigerian writer Jude Dibia who read and liked the manuscript. When I go over those older versions, I see clunky, long sentences lacking a shred of elegance, and a plot that wasn’t really going anywhere, just stuff happening to the same people. There was no trigger, no plumbline, no real plot really—a reader of those early versions would not have cared to know what happens next. Jude Dibia was the doctor who worked on the MS and showed this writer how a plot works, offering invaluable lessons in such crucial things as point-of-view. He also gave my novel the necessity of conflict, all the things I should have known before putting a single word to paper. Mentoring is very important, I can’t stress this enough, just as I cannot appreciate Jude Dibia’s mentoring me enough—he didn’t even accept a single naira in payment. By the time JD and I were done, the novel had started to assume its present form. Two more rounds of editing were then done, with Azafi Omoluabi-Ogosi, who later became my business partner at Parresia Publishers Limited, and lastly with Rose Kahendy, Parresia’s external editor.

So, when I’m asked, how did you write your book, the correct answer is not really that I wrote it into being—I rather edited it into being. And editing is really hard work. There are very few writers, I know of none, I’ve heard of none, who can write a book that would be perfect as it is; in fact, the writing is the least bit of it. It is the editing process, whether done alone or with an editor, that near political process of choosing words and weighing sentences—that is where the book emerges from.

"The birds and the weeds are the two sorts of editors we have—the first share the author’s vision though they can be impatient and try to assimilate the author's voice into their own style; the second, the weeds, do not share the author’s vision and have got to be avoided in the same way a weed infestation must be fought."

So, writing requires two kinds of people—a mentor, and an editor or editors—who share one thing in common: your vision. I think an image would suffice—an agricultural one. Farming is an activity for which all you need really is a piece of land, but agriculture, that great science, is a synergy of efforts to coax the most out of that bare piece of land, a piece of land that must be studied as one would a person one desires something off. Depending on the soil, fertilizers, ranging from carefully cultivated compost to higher-end chemicals, would be added. And there is the human effort, the farmer’s just one of these, others can be hired hands or family, a wife, children. The birds too, come to help fertilize the crop and sometimes demand their share with impatience; the weeds keep the farmer on his feet. All these are participants in the science that puts bole and fish at Mama Mercy’s corner, ready for your 100 naira. We must imagine our written words to be that barren piece of earth, the writer as the farmer. But it is the effort of the birds and the weeds that bring about the fruition of the preceding effort. The birds and the weeds are the two sorts of editors we have—the first share the author’s vision though they can be impatient and try to assimilate the author's voice into their own style; the second, the weeds, do not share the author’s vision and have got to be avoided in the same way a weed infestation must be fought. And who is the mentor—the mentor is that invisible need to affirm oneself by conquering nature, something elemental.

I hope these ideas will help you find the book you’ve been meaning to write and I look forward to reading it.

—Richard Ali

[City of Memories is published by Black Palm, an imprint of Parrésia Publishers]

Eghosa Imasuen @ TEDxIfe

Eghosa Imasuen, author of To Saint Patrick and the newly released Fine Boys, delivered this talk at the inaugural TEDxIfe. (Imasuen was a guest writer at GCLF 2009 and GCLF 2011.)

Review of Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose

From Louise Doughty's Guardian review: 

Above all, Prose's forthright, waspish and often very funny book is a plea to all writers for vigour and clarity, one which encourages them to tend to the details of technique, and the mastery of language, as closely as they tend to their own ambition. It demands that they love literature as much as they want the literary world to love them – an exhortation many published as well as unpublished writers would do well to heed. Reading Like a Writer makes it clear just how much work is involved in being a writer before, during and after the formulation of a sentence, and that's a point that can't be made often enough.

Stephen Derwent Partington on the Caine Prize

Two quotes pulled from the piece in the East African:

A recent blogger, Carmen McCain, has argued that much of the present debate over the Caine Prize and African writing in general, puts the writers themselves in an impossible position, stuck between having to: a) write for a UK-based prize that might represent a Western readership that likes poverty porn; b) satisfy Africanists-in-place that they’ve not pandered too much and sold out; c) satisfy the new liberal Western academics who are pussyfooting around poverty porn ; d) be “true” to the social situation on the ground in vast parts of Africa, where some people (the majority) really do still often suffer.

And:

 Of course, it is your pleasant task as a reader to pursue these matters further and make up your own mind, and so I’d urge us all to visit two websites: a) that of the Caine Prize itself, where all of the stories can be easily and freely downloaded; b) the Zunguzungu blog, which is hosting a Caine Prize blogathon, and which lists all of those diverse readers — general and academic — who are participating in a wider debate over 2012’s shortlist. I’d also ask you to participate there, and by doing so reclaim: This is, after all, our African and world literature, and not only that of any UK-based panel.

Read the article.

Wole Oguntokun Reboots Shakespeare

Nigerian playwright Wole Oguntokun has just presented Itan Oginintin, a Yoruba remake of William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, at Shakespeare's Globe in London for a festival showing 38 Shakespeare plays in different world languages as part of the London Cultural Olympiad. Quoting Fox News:

For the Lagos-based performers in the Renegade Theatre company, the chance to perform allows them to represent a country whose rich history in the arts has faded under corrupt governments.

"Some time between the '80s and the '90s, I think a bridge collapsed," said Wole Oguntokun, who leads Renegade Theatre. "And now we are all looking for a way across that bridge."

Wole Oguntokun was a facilitator of the Drama and Theatre Workshop at GCLF 2011.

The Voice Interviews: Ayodele Arigbabu

What are your fondest memories of childhood?

Chasing lizards in the backyard and getting lost in the fantasy world of comic books. I am the son of a brain surgeon. There are insinuations that he must have performed some experiments on my brain while I was a kid . . . either way, I have no proof, so I’m keeping an open mind.

What happened to the reading culture in Nigeria?

The reading culture never really went anywhere. Perhaps it’s the publishing culture that took a dip after Nigerians inherited the publishing houses from the colonials who founded them or perhaps Nigerians just found alternative reading material since publishers weren’t producing for them anymore. Nigerians have always read and will continue to read.

Why did you start DADA stores?

I’ve always been interested in retail and finding myself in publishing where I’ve found the supply end to be the real problem, I decided to experiment with a long-held idea for a media store. The real catalyst was having my wife come home from India with amazingly cheap personal items and fashion accessories, and we decided to do an interesting mix and have a test run for DADA stores. We ended up being satisfied with how much we sold.

What books did you read as a child?

I grew up on the same kind of stuff that people of my generation grew up on--comic books, the Peter and Jane, Famous Five, Secret Seven, Three Investigators, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew and Indiana Jones series. Then the more gritty James Hadley Chase and Nick Carter series. Of course the Pacesetters and African Writers series formed part of my literary education too. I got to read lots of Nigerian authors published by publishers like Onibonoje (I love that name), Heinemann and others because I had an aunt who worked with the ministry of education and always sent me box-loads of books to read. I think the final unhinging happened while I served as Librarian of the Pen Circle, a literary association we ran as students of the University of Lagos, and we got a donation of over 250 titles from the British Council Library and the books were in my custody for a while. I read my heart out to say the least.

On reading culture again: what was different when you were growing compared to now?

I would say the access to books. I don’t know if I was just lucky in finding books around me all the time, but now, sometimes even I have to struggle to fork out the money to buy the books I’m interested in--this is one reason why I always try to make our books, DADA Books, affordable. The internet is changing the game gradually though, because now, you can access millions of books on a gadget as accessible as your mobile phone. The question is whether Nigerian publishers would be ready to exploit this shift as quickly as possible because with the convergence of different media on the digital front. All that talk about reading culture is soon going to be glib, and the real question will be: ‘how proactive is our publishing culture?’

How do you encourage people to read through your efforts there?

At DADA stores, we’ve taken books from publishing houses that we feel share our brand ethos together with our books, and we are working at stocking up on choice music and film content as well so that we’ll be offering a one-stop fun-shop. We started with the notion that even if other things attract people to the store, there is a strong likelihood that they will pick up books because of the way we market them, and we buttress this by holding regular book events at the CORA House at 95 Bode Thomas, Surulere, where our store is located, not just to sell our books, but also to give the literary crowd in Lagos a cool hangout spot on the mainland. It’s a work in progress, but that’s the general idea.

What projects have you been involved in that encourage reading in Nigeria?

The Lagos Book & Art Festival organized by the Committee For Relevant Art. It’s an amazing model built on the simple thought that literature should be firmly promoted within the broader context of arts and culture, so at the festival, you have book stands and book readings, live music performances and theatre presentations, crafts workshops and craft displays, art exhibitions and discussions, all aimed at promoting literacy and the joy of reading. It’s a festival in the real sense of it. I’ve been actively involved in the planning of the festival since 2002 and have always found it to be a refreshing highpoint for every year since then. Recently, I’ve been running creative writing classes for children at the Garden CityLiterary Festival in Port Harcourt, and I must say I always look forward to being awed by the creativity of the kids. I also collaborate with different organizations on their projects and on projects initiated by DADA for various book readings, creative writing workshops, and other such activities.

What do you think is the biggest challenge to promoting a vibrant reading culture in Nigeria?

I’d say the publishing sector. The sector definitely needs to get organized and get imaginative. It is currently not a publishers’ market, it is the education sector’s market because if the education ministries stop recommending books by Nigerian publishers for Nigerian schools, many publishing houses would fold up, which is really sad because if publishers sold to a mass market as they should, then books should sell like MTN recharge cards, like Omo detergent and Gala beef rolls, not because some civil servant made them compulsory for students or housewives, but because the inherent value in books had been marketed to people successfully and they were exercising their choice out of the sheer pleasure of reading. Talking about the poverty matrix, look at beer, people celebrate in times of plenty by consuming alcohol, yet when in depression, they still drink to lift their spirits. There is no way you can tell me people in this country are too poor to buy books when they’ve made the telecoms sector rival the oil and gas sector for profitability in just one decade. The people are not too poor to buy books, the publishers have just not touched them in the right spots to make that critical decision to spend less time and money talking on MTN and spend more on DADA books. Believe me, our core competition is MTN.

What’s the major challenge you face as a publisher?

The greatest challenge used to be about the lack of an effective distribution network, but currently, with the benefit of experience, I’m able to say, it’s all about the cheddars baby! Give me enough money and I’ll build me an effective distribution system. Right across this country. MTN did it (yes, I’ve mentioned them again), Dangote did it, the oil companies are still doing it. But everybody does it with money. In the publishing industry however, we seem to keep up this inbreeding thing, a few of us will sell a few books to a few of us in Lagos and then fly to Abuja to sell a few more books to a few more of us in Abuja and feel fulfilled afterwards . . . it’s not because we don’t have megalomaniac tendencies to take on the whole African continent, it’s because we don’t have the war chest to make this happen. How can this be corrected? Fewer people should call my phone telling me about some amazing manuscript they want to publish, I admit that I meet truly fantastic people and their great writing through these enquiries, but more people should call about wanting to sink a few million dollars into a publishing initiative. Yes I’m calling everyone out, this thing takes money, let’s find us some serious money first, and then let’s talk business.

Why did you decide to publish the first DADA book?

My days with the Pen Circle at the University of Lagoshad really sharpened my interest in publishing and from 2006, I had started conceiving DADA as a platform for bringing all my interests together under one umbrella. The first DADA book was supposed to be my own book, A Fistful ofTales. I find it very interesting that one of the first people I shared the idea with was Jumoke Verissimo, she was interviewing writers for The Guardianthen and I still have the pull-out of the edition where she got me to talk about the forthcoming book. It turned out that Jumoke’s poetry collection I am Memory was published as the first DADA book in November 2008, then came Onyeka Nwelue’s The Abyssinian Boy in January 2009. A Fistful of Tales only came later in September 2009. On publishing myself, while it does feel weird engaging in self-promotion at that level, being published by one of the coolest imprints on the planet (*wink*) makes up for all that, besides, I think my writing was tailor-made for DADA . . . how many other imprints can handle the kind of stuff I turn out? I don’t know how else to put it without sounding more cocky than I already do.

How can the Nigerian publishing industry grow?

With some serious lateral thinking. Notice that I’m not saying anything that sounds like ‘government must do this’ or ‘government must do that.’ People need to get organized and then government would fall in line behind them, not the other way round. I must credit Farafinafor shining a torch in the darkness, if there had not been a Farafina, there would never have been DADA Books, or at least not as we know it today. They showed an inkling of what was possible and have continued to play a leadership role in expanding the possibilities. People should study the Farafina model and then decide for themselves what should and shouldn’t be done.

What should be done differently in local publishing?

We should go digital, I mean we should really take charge of the digital space. The internet scam artists aka Yahoo boys have done it successfully, blanketing the internet with their spam emails, and if they can go viral with their internet ‘publishing’ with little education and zero infrastructure, then there is nothing stopping Nigeria’s literati from legitimately taking charge of cyberspace. It’s happening in some fashion already, but to paraphrase Marcus Garvey: to really effect a revolution, there’s no other way to do it but to get organized.

What advice do you have for anyone thinking of going into publishing as a career?

I don’t have any advice to give, just a very pertinent question: Are you sure you really want to do that? If the answer is yes and you have actually taken time to meditate over all the attendant issues, then go for it, but if you waver for even a fraction of a second over an answer, just take it easy on yourself and go into oil and gas or something. Life really doesn’t have to be so hard.

Interviewed by Temitayo Olofinlua.

Favourite Five: Ayodele Arigbabu

*This is the first of a new feature that we plan to run regularly on this blog. In Favourite Five we simply ask a selection of book lovers to list their five favourite book titles.*

Ayodele Arigbabu is the publisher of DADA Books and the author of A Fistful of Tales. Ayo is a regular at the Garden City Literary Festival, where he has for several years coordinated creative writing classes for children. (We will feature a long interview with Ayo Arigbabu tomorrow, and he is also sending us pictures from the Hay Festival.)

Ayo had this to say about his Favourite Five: "I’m bad at this sort of question because I’m such a generalist and I think it’s unfair to have to choose between any of your favourites . . ."

The Caine Prize and Literary Tensions by Sokari Ekine

In her essay for Pambazuka, the Nigerian blogger Sokari Ekine starts with these words:

Towards the end of last year, Nigerian writer Ikhide R. Ikheloa published a series of essays in which he accused the Nigerian author Chris Abani of Graceland fame of telling lies and engaging in exaggerations relating to his admitted imprisonment in Nigeria’s most notorious hell hole prison, KiriKiri in 19xx.

“It is one thing for Abani to tell a lie and then move on with his life. It is another thing for him to continue to perpetuate the same lie at the expense of Africa. It is obnoxious and offensive, and if he was white, it would be considered racist. Since the confrontation/intervention in 2003, Abani has gone on to conduct moving interviews and given speeches expanding in graphic detail his alleged experiences. As I said earlier, the details get more fantastic in the re-telling and details and dates change each time. It is comic really.”

In a follow up blog post he repeats his allegations against Abani and further accuses, but does not name [I would like names please--if Abani is to be outed as a liar why not the rest?] “a tiny cabal of African writers” who “seem willing to wheedle, lie and steal their way into stardom on the tortured back of Africa.”

Read on.

Asia In My Life: an essay by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Via Books Live:

Acclaimed Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, who will be speaking at the Cape Town Book Fair in June, writes about the importance of India in his life and in the anti-colonial struggle throughout Africa. He stresses the importance of interaction between Africa, India and South America in ending the “Age of the European Empire” in this feature for Pambazuka News.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o was a guest author at GCLF 2009.

Kwirkly Goes Arty

Kwirkly, a space to curate and share ideas is doing something interesting.  Some ideas hit us quickly: one is about a partnership between Wole Soyinka and MI. "Rapper MI releases a mixtape whose lyrics are made from poems of Nobel Prize winner (Literature) Wole Soyinka."

There is another interesting one about crowd-sourcing a fictional piece. "Start a crowd-source fictional story on Twitter, edited & moderated by someone like Ikhide Ikheloa or Molara Wood, where each Twitter user, after writing his/her part in 140 characters or less, mentions another person that continues the story. Each tweet is followed by a hashtag that allows the moderator to curate the whole story, which can later be downloaded free."

Kwirkly should write an idea about making literary festivals better, more accessible in Nigeria. That would be an interesting one to read.

Chimamanda Adichie at the Hay Festival 2012

For ten days,  the Hay Festival will feature debates and conversations with poets and scientists, novelists and historians, artists and gardeners, comedians and musicians, filmmakers and politicians. Chimamanda Adichie--award winning author of Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun and The Thing Around Your Neck--will join other writers at the Hay this year. She will be talking about The Commonwealth Lecture, even as the Hay host for the first time the announcement of the winners of the Commonwealth Book Prize and the Short Story Prize. The judges will discuss the judging process and the winning writers will be in conversation with Harriett Gilbert.  (We are working towards bringing you pictures from the event. So check back for those.)

Adichie has been part of the Rainbow Book Club's Get Nigeria Reading Campaign.

Last week, she wrote in the Financial Times about a man of grace, her Uncle Mai.

Sometimes he laughed aloud, short joyous bursts, at his own stories: how my grandfather had refused to leave our fallen hometown and had instead dug a hole in the front yard and climbed in with his rusted Dane gun, how he, Uncle Mai, was so filthy and soap-deprived towards the end of the war that he climbed into a stream and bathed with raw unripe cassava, although he was not sure whether the cassava made him even dirtier. And as he spoke, I thought of the word “grace”. He was an easy man to like, a man who forgave easily. He was also a man who believed easily. In the months of his illness, many purveyors of health trooped through his compound gates: Pentecostal prayer warriors, traditional herbalists, self-styled doctors. They brought him specially cooked meals, or they lit candles and prayed all night or they claimed to unearth the cause of his illness in the soil beneath the ube tree.

 Go here to read the rest of the piece.

Rainbow Book of the Month: May

This month the Rainbow Book Club, one of the organisers of the GCLF, will be reviewing Why Women Won't Make it to Heaven by Dul Johnson.

Date: Friday 25 May, 2012 / Time: 11.00 am to 12.00 pm / Venue: The Poolside, Le Meridien Hotel, G.R.A Phase II, Port Harcourt

Bibi Bakare-Yusuf named a Yale World Fellow

Bankole Olayebi, Chukwuemeka Ike and Bibi Bakare-Yusuf at GCLF

The founder of the Nigerian publishing house Cassava Republic Press has been named a 2012 Yale World Fellow. According to The Guardian:

Bakare-Yusuf is among 16 World Fellows selected this year, from a pool of about 2, 500 applicants. This year’s cohort brings the total number of Yale World Fellows since the program’s inception in 2002 to 224 Fellows, representing 79 countries.

The Yale World Fellows Program is the University’s signature global leadership development initiative and a core element of Yale’s ongoing commitment to internationalization. Each year, the University invites a group of exemplary mid-career professionals from a wide range of fields and countries for an intensive four-month period of academic enrichment and leadership training.

Cassava Republic Press are regular participants in the GCLF book fair, and Bibi Bakare-Yusuf was seminar discussant at the 2010 festival.

Jahazi Literary & Jazz Festival 2012

The newly created Jahazi Literary & Jazz Festival in Zanzibar has just announced its lineup of artists for this year's festival on Facebook. Among the guest authors are Ugandan Doreen Baingana and Nigerian Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Doreen Baingana visited Port Harcourt in February of this year for a reading organised by the Rainbow Book Club. Rainbow Book Club, which is the organiser of the Garden City Literary Festival, has hosted many award-winning authors, including Caine Prize winner E. C. Osondu, Uwem Akpan, Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani and Kaine Agary, amongst others.

Garden City Literary Festival: 5 Years On

“The festival would stir interest in literature and inspire a reading culture.” Those were the words of the Rivers State governor, Rotimi Amaechi, five years ago at the first Garden City Literary Festival. GLCF is sponsored by Rivers State, hosted in Port Harcourt, and organized by the Rainbow Book Club.

2012 will make five years of GLCF, five years of staying true to that aim by finding ways to make reading interesting. GLCF has featured over twenty well-known writers from different parts of the world. Through the festival's writing workshops, several budding writers have gotten the push that they needed to get their works out there for the world to read.

Annah Dornubari, a poet based in Port Harcourt, is an example. After participating in one of the GLCF workshops he published a collection of poetry titled Tears for Ogoni. Sometimes, interacting with writers who have crossed the many hurdles of publishing is all that one needs to take a leap. Maybe that was what Annah needed, and GLCF gave him that.

Ochogwu Abbas Onoja is another example. The student of the Faculty of Law at the Plateau State University was spotted by Prof. Wole Soyinka at the maiden edition of GCLF. With Prof. Soyinka’s support, Onoja represented Nigeria at preliminaries of the World Debate Institute at Legon University, Ghana. He was one of the four best speakers from the continent, and the first Nigerian to qualify for the World Final International Tournament. At the grande finale in London, Onoja was acknowledged for his oratory skills.

Preparations are now in top gear for the this year's edition of GLCF, which is scheduled for October 15-20, 2012. In the coming days we will bring you more success stories from past editions of GLCF, as well as interviews with past participants. So, "favourite" this blog on your browser. And please share the articles on Twitter, Facebook, and everywhere else.

Finally, if there's anything or anyone you'd love to see at the next GLCF, drop a comment.

The Photo Says It All

Welcome to The Voice*, the come-to portal for information about the Port Harcourt-based Garden City Literary Festival [and here, in case you're wondering, is the go-to portal]. Apart from doing our job [which is basically to promote the GCLF through guest writer interviews, profiles, photos, Twitter reportage, Youtube videos, Facebook polls, chatty commentary, etc etc], we will also blog about anything we consider connected to literature. [Such as this.] So stay connected to The Voice*. And prepare to be thrilled, informed, engaged.

P/S: Do you have any questions/requests regarding the festival? Drop a comment.