SOYINKA TO VISIT UW: From a press release: Nobel Prize-winning poet, novelist, and playwright, Wole Soyinka, will deliver a free public lecture on “The Politics of Art” at the University of Wyoming, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 4:30 p.m., in the Wyoming Ballroom. Soyinka is the first black writer to win the Nobel Price for Literature. His 1986 award represented recognition of Soyinka’s “large and richly varied literary production” as well as his “moral stature” as a critic of political oppression in Africa, including his Nigerian homeland. Educated in his native Nigeria and in England, Soyinka is the author of more than 20 works of drama, fiction, poetry, and autobiography. Soyinka’s work tends to reflect his heritage through the mythology of his Yoruba people, as well and his experiences as a political prisoner during the Nigerian Civil War of the 1960s. Beginning his writing career as a playwright, Soyinka’s comedies include “The Lion and the Jewel,” “The Trial of Brother Jero,” and “Madmen and Specialists.” His dramas include “The Swamp Dwellers,” “A Play of Giants,” and “Requiem for a Futurologist.” Collections of Soyinka’s poetry include “Poems from Prison,” “Ogun Abibiman,” and “Mandela’s Earth and Other Poems.” Soyinka is the author of two highly-regarded novels. “The Interpreters” relates the experiences of six Nigerian intellectuals; “Season of Anomy” is based on Soyinka’s nearly two years imprisonment on charges of collaboration with Biafran rebels. An active academic, Soyinka has taught at several Nigerian universities and has served as visiting professor at Cambridge, Sheffield, and Yale Universities. He now is Elias Ghanem Professor of Creative Writing at University of Nevada, Las Vegas and serves on the executive board of the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine.
- posted by Michael Shay @ 7:09 PM