Africana Studies Professor Awarded For Literary Excellence, Values’ Commitment

For his commitment to democratic ideals, humanistic values, and literary excellence in Africa, Tanure Ojaide, UNC Charlotte’s Frank Graham Porter Professor of Africana Studies, has won The Fonlon-Nichols Award.

Ojaide will receive the prestigious award at the 42nd Annual ALA Conference in Atlanta, scheduled for April 6-9. The thematic focus of the conference is “Justice and Human Dignity in Africa and the African Diaspora.”

The Fonlon-Nichols Award is given every year to an African writer for excellence in creative writing and for contributions to the struggles for human rights and freedom of expression. The award was established in 1992 to honor Bernard Fonlon, who was a writer, teacher, and editor, and Lee Nichols, a journalist, for their contributions to African literature, support for human rights, and advocacy of freedom of expression. The founding endowment of the award is housed at the University of Alberta, under the responsibility of the Dean of Arts.

The African Literature Association nominated Ojaide for the award. The independent, non-profit, professional society facilitates attempts of a world-wide audience to appreciate the efforts of African writers and artists. The organization further affirms the primacy of the African people in shaping the future of African literature, and works towards establishing constructive interactions among scholars.

Ojaide is a prolific writer with 17 poetry collections, two memoirs, three collections of short stories, four novels, and seven scholarly books. His poems have been anthologized in dozens of major anthologies, including The Poetry of Men’s Lives: An International Anthology (2004), Emergency Kit: Poems for Strange Times (1996), and Border Lines: Contemporary Poems in English (1995).

He has presented as one of the Personally Speaking published authors in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences signature speakers’ series. He also has done poetry readings at the International Poetry Festival (Medellin, Colombia), at the Pan-Africa Poetry Festival (Accra, Ghana), at the World Poetry Festival (Rotterdam, The Netherlands), and at the Sahitya Akademi World Poetry Festival (New Delhi, India).

His writings have also been discussed at the 2005 and 2008 international conferences at the Delta State University, in Nigeria. His poetry has been translated into Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Spanish, Sanskrit, and Hindi.

Ojaide’s achievements are as extensive as are his works. In 2006, he received the First Citizens Bank Scholars Medal for his distinction in creative writing and scholarship. The two-time Fulbright Scholar, for the years, 2002-2003 and 2013-2014, was also the recipient of the 1999-2000 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship.

As a Fellow in Writing at the University of Iowa, he won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the Africa Region (1987), the All-Africa Okigbo Prize for Poetry (1988, 1997), the BBC Arts and Africa Poetry Award (1988), and the Association of Nigerian Authors Poetry Award (1988, 1994, 2003, and 2011). Drawing the Map of Heaven: An African Writer’s Experience of America, Ojaide’s non-fiction work, was a runner-up for the Penguin Prize for African Writing (2010).

Educated at the University of Ibadan, where he received a bachelor’s degree in English, and at Syracuse University, where he received a master’s in Creative Writing and a Ph.D. in English, Ojaide’s areas of scholarly interest span across African/Black Literatures, World and Postcolonial Literatures, Creative Writing (Poetry), and Oral Poetic Performance of Africa and the African Diaspora. His works include Labyrinths of the Delta (1986), Great Boys: An African Childhood (1998), God’s Medicine Men & Other Stories (2004), The Activist (2006), and Contemporary African Literature: New Approaches (2012)

Words: Kamakshi Kamath | Image: Courtesy of Tanure Ojaide