NLNG Prize for Literature 2012

An initial shortlist of ten books has been announced for the NLNG Nigeria Prize for Literature, 2012.

Lola Shoneyin, one of the GCLF guest writers is on the list. Hearty congratulations from the GCLF Team! We look forward to seeing her during the festival. She will facilitate the poetry workshop.

GCLF Writers' Workshop: Deadline Extended

Entries for the 5th edition of the annual Garden City Literary Festival Writers’ Workshop are now being accepted. The workshop will hold in October 2012.

The Writers’ Workshop is a creative platform where aspiring writers sit under the tutelage of their established counterparts. It is recommended for anyone who wants to improve their writing skills. Each applicant must indicate their preferred choice of workshop.

Application to more than one class will not be considered. Participants are required to submit samples of their writing (in line with requirement for the different genres) to info@gardencityfestival before Thursday, 13th September 2012, to secure a place.

More information here

Chika Unigwe: On Writing Night Dancer

The first time I heard the term, "Night Dancer", and had its meaning defined for me, I knew I had found the title for my then work-in-progress. "Night Dancer" is an Acholi word which means "witch". A witch, not necessarily in the sense of a broom-flying woman with a beaked nose and the  black cape, but of any woman who refuses to stay within the boundaries prescribed for her by Acholi culture. I am indebted to my good friend, the Ugandan writer, Monica Arac D'Nyeko for that information.

I thought of writing the story of Night Dancer long before I actually began writing it. When I was very young, there were always stories of men marrying second wives because their wives 'could not' give them sons. Those kind of stories were everywhere. It was obvious to me -even at that age- that there was something unfair in this (as not all of the older wives consented to sharing their husbands with another woman)   but somehow the men seemed to always get away with it blameless. It bothered me that many grown-ups I knew seemed to be understanding. I thought perhaps, such understanding came with adulthood. Yet the older I became, the less understanding of it I became. Night Dancer became my way of exploring why some people make those kind of choices and to imagine what happens when a woman refuses -in that kind of culture- to remain.

Every time I give birth, I am overwhelmed by the amount of love I feel for the new born. That love never goes away. I am aware that there is very little I would not sacrifice for my children. I also wanted to explore that kind of love. The one that keeps giving of itself. I started writing Night Dancer in 2008 at a residency in Italy. Thanks to a UNESCO fellowship, I had six weeks of freedom from household chores and daily worries with four children to dedicate myself to reading and writing. I wrote the first 10 000 words at that residency, cooped up in my room in the castle and only taking breaks to eat delicious lunch (thanks to the amazing trio of cooks), play ping-pong (with Daragh, a visual arts fellow), shop (with Jo Shapcott and Gabeba Baderoon, amazing poets) and eat dinner with everyone else. By the time I went home, both my story and I were fit enough to continue our relationship. I wrote in between school runs; shopping; cooking; laundry; helping the children with their homework. I synced my bedtime with that of my youngest's and woke around 1am to work for a few hours before catching a few more hours of sleep. It helped tremendously. By the time I went on a Rockefeller fellowship in 2009, I had a draft I could work on. The draft was reworked several times (I had a wonderful set of friends who read and made comments as well as my agent) before it was sold. And then with my editor, we tweaked it some more (removed some passages, replaced others) until we were as happy as we could be with the result.

Finishing  a book is always an emotional moment for me. The characters I have come to know so well begin to take their leave so that others can occupy the space they once occupied. They get ready to be released into the world, nurtured, and rounded and perfected as much as they possibly could. Every book demands a lot of its writer: time, dedication, love. The same as any good parent would give their children.

Chika Unigwe is an Afro-Belgian writer of Nigerian origin. She is the author of fiction, poetry, articles and educational material. Her second novel, On Black Sisters' Street, was published in Dutch in 2008 (as Fata Morgana) and in English in 2009. Night Dancer is her latest novel. 

TODAY is the International Literacy Day 2012

According to UNESCO, today is the International Literacy Day, 2012. This year's theme is Literacy and Peace. This theme was adopted by the United Nations Literacy Decade (UNLD) to demonstrate the multiple uses and value that literacy brings to people. 

Literacy contributes to peace as it brings people closer to attaining individual freedoms and better understanding the world, as well as preventing or resolving conflict. The connection between literacy and peace can be seen by the fact that in unstable democracies or in conflict-affected countries it is harder to establish or sustain a literate environment.

About the Day

For over 40 years now, UNESCO has been celebrating International Literacy Day by reminding the international community that literacy is a human right and the foundation of all learning. 

Tell us: how do you think that literacy can promote peace? 

Happy International Literacy Day from the GCLF team!

GCLF 2012 Bookfair

Kola Tubosun: on the NT LitMag

Oh well, here you are. I am going to tell you about the LitMag anyway, whether you want it or not.

The project began as an email from one editor to another. But that's not what you want to know. You want to know what we do, why we do it, how often we do it, and what the relevance of all of this is. So here it is: the LitMag is our baby from Nigerianstalk.org. I am the editor, which means that I get entries from all over the continent, read them, and prepare them for publication, and then publish them. The LitMag is published every two weeks.

You asked about reception? It has been fantastic, in fact. To reach more people, we got a twitter account at @NTLitMag through which we post newly published articles, as well as other literature related information. We have also been receiving entries from all over. 

My aim for the magazine is that we one day produce another Caine Prize winner. As an editor, I am biased for contributions that challenge expectations and form. You see, one of my favourite times as an undergraduate was sneaking into creative writing classes taught then by Professor Niyi Osundare. I wasn't registered for the class, but I was interested in getting an idea of what guys were writing during those times. The class was about poetry, and I learnt a lot. More importantly, I gained a better appreciation for variation in form and style. When I publish poem or prose on the LitMag, I am looking for work that give me that level of literary satisfaction.

So far we've published Kolade Ajayi, Richard Ali, Efe Okogu, Benson Eluma, Rotimi Babatunde, Dami Ajayi, Emanuel Iduma, Temitayo Olofinlua, Anja Choon, Olumide Abimbola, Peter Akinlabi, Temie Giwa, Ikhide Ikheloa, Teju Cole, and a number of authors some of whose names you haven't even heard before. It's true. Check out our back issues here. Again, it's important to note that the magazine is aimed at showing new work by new writers, or old writers writing in new ways. I seek poetry by authors known for prose. I seek prose from authors known for drama, etc. Something new, something fresh, something different.

So far, we've also published one tribute issue to Ify Agwu who died a couple of months ago. The next tribute issue will be for Rotimi Babatunde, the winner of this year's Caine Prize. Depending on the literary environment of the weekend when the issue is published, each edition will feature new work by new writers. Those work will include photography, poetry, prose, and plays.

There you have it. I hope this helps. You know how we do it, why we do it, and how many times we do it. You didn't ask if I think it's worth it, but the answer is yes. I like this new chance to add my voice to the literary environment of the continent.

Kola Tubosun is a linguist and fulbright scholar, editor-in-chief of the NTLitMag, online. Contributions should be sent to litmag@nigerianstalk.org

Onyeka Nwelue: On His Writing Journey

I became a writer before I knew I was a writer. It started when I was eleven years old, back in the seminary, where my parents sent me to fulfill their wild dreams for them: they told me that they promised their God that I would serve him. I had no right to argue with them. I joined forces and went to the seminary. After six years, when I was supposed to head to Trinity College, Okigwe, I headed straight to India, to write.

In India, I was attending the International Writers’ Festival. I was 18 years old then. I knew no one in India and I had no family, but I was determined to survive. I flew from Lagos to Mumbai. It was a direct flight. By the time I was in Mumbai, I took another flight to Delhi and when I got to Delhi, I took a taxi to Kurushektra, a state in the northern part of India. There, I met Abha Iyengar, one of India’s finest writers, who brought me back to Delhi and put me up in her home. I lived with her mother who found time to read every single thing I wrote. She treated me like her son and she reminded me that I was her son. 

Months after, I left India, I travelled down to Ethiopia and then I was back in India, depressed and broke. My father was happy to see me. My mother cried the day I walked into the house. My aunts and uncles hated me. They whispered to themselves: “He just went abroad to waste money we don’t have.” They annoyed me, because they didn’t give me any money. They annoyed me, because they didn’t say these things to me. Only one did an honourable thing: she threw me out of her house in Lagos honourably, by waking me up one early morning and saying, ‘Take this money. Go to your parents.’ I left.

My father invited me for a talk. We talked about India and slowly, we started talking about university education. I saw reasons with him and wrote JAMB, then got admission into the University of Nigeria, Nsukka to study Sociology & Anthropology. I was going to live with a professor and his wife. They are cool people. I had no problem living with them. They even started making me uncomfortable, with their pampering. I don’t like to be pampered. I left their house, without them knowing. I just packed out. I stayed on campus with some friends for a while. Same time, I was working on my novel, The Abyssinian Boy, rewriting pages and chapters, forcing the manuscript on my friends, Eromo Egbejule and Osondu Awaraka. They read and made delicate notes and since I had set my mind on getting my book published while in the university, I constructed a positive mindscape that I lived in. 

One day, while sitting in Osondu Awaraka’s room and arguing about religion with his roommates, Ayodele Arigbabu, publisher of DADA Books called me from Cape Town. He wanted one thing: to buy the West African rights to my book. He said he loved the book. I was more than excited. Was it not better to sell every right to him? I couldn’t control my excitement. We started work on the book and good things started happening. 

On the 24th of January, 2009, The Abyssinian Boy was launched in Lagos to a handful of Indians and Nigerians. Politicians made promises they couldn’t keep. I forgot about them. My father spoke to the audience and told them how elated he was. He was proud of me. I was also proud of him. My aunt that gave me money and threw me out of her house was there too. She was also proud of me. I was also proud of her for throwing me out bravely. At least, one dream had come true.

I’ve met everyone in The Abyssinian Boy. I have, at least, been to many of the locations I wrote about and everything that happens in it I imagined, but my imagination doesn’t deny the fact that they were inspired by things that happened to me. I created a people, a society that are at once, believable and magical realist. Wading through the streets of Delhi in real life, I needed to recreate the streets in the book; at first, I wanted to make it look like they are in real life, yet description in fiction is one thing you need to be careful with. For me, there was no single negative review of the book when it was released. Everyone loved it. Reviewers hailed it as ‘out-of-the-box’ and many people compared the style to that of Salman Rushdie. I was humbled. I knew I had been challenged. Why? My second book is expected to be better than the first. 

The Abyssinian Boy blessed me. And also cursed me. It brought instant fame that I didn’t imagine could come with a first book. I won some awards, prizes and nominated for another major youth award. I made radio and TV appearances. I spoke to high school students who were not interested in creative writing and kept begging them to accept writers and love them. I travelled from Nsukka to Kaduna to Abuja down to Awka and all over Nigeria. I met politicians who told me they were proud of me, but I knew they were mocking me. 

As the perfect opportunist that I am, I took advantage of the love people showered on me and moved on. The CEO of Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA), Peace Anyiam-Osigwe blessed me years after, by then, The Abyssinian Boy had been republished in India by Serene Woods and asked me to direct the first edition of Bayelsa Book & Craft Fair. It was a huge and challenging event. I was under a storm. I was not going to fail. I was going to host a community of writers and writers are not people you can please at all. What almost hampered me was my age: each moment I tried to do something, I thought about my age, but that was the greatest opportunity I ever got to ride on the back of success and I grabbed it. I organized the event in Yenogoa and the writers had fun. They went home, wrote about it and praised me so much. I almost cried. I was proud of myself once again. I felt like Pablo Ganguli, the organizer of Liberatum Festival, which hosts the biggest names in the arts and culture industries in the world. 

Back in Lagos, I became the editor of Film Afrique, the online film magazine. Sitting in my spacious office, I began to reach Pontas and today, I am signed to one of the biggest literary agencies in the world, Pontas Literary & Film Agency in Barcelona. But, I had to travel to Barcelona to sign. It was a beautiful experience. I went to Barcelona to sign my two year contract, not as a Nigerian footballer, but as a writer.

Sitting in my spacious office, I got my admission letter into the prestigious Prague Film School in the Czech Republic. I am writing this from my apartment in Prague, so believe me, this story, as simple as it sounds; it has not been an easy journey.

Onyeka Nwelue was born in 1988 in Nigeria. He has contributed reviews to Farafina magazine and other publications. His writings have appeared in The Sun, Wild Goose Poetry Review, Kafla Inter-Continental and The Guardian. He is the editor of Film Afrique, a primer on African film initiatives, he manages Blues and Hills Consultancy and is currently studying film making and directing. He was nominated as artist of the year for The 2009 Future Awards. The Abyssinian Boy is his first novel. He tells us about his favourite five books!