Obari Gomba is guest writer for April reading, conversation in Port Harcourt

• …prize to honour Biko, Adesanmi, Wainaina calls for entry

By Editor

THE winner of Pan-African Writers Association (PAWA) Poetry Prize (English Category), with his collection, The Lilt Of The Rebel, Dr. Obari Gomba, will be Guest Reader and Poet for the month of April for Nigerian Literary Society (NLS). Gomba is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing who is also serving as the Dean of Faculty of Humanities at the University of Port Harcourt, Choba, Rivers State. The event will hold on April 30, 2022 at Venue is Alliance Francaise, 20 Herbert Macaulay Street, Old GRA, Amadi Flats, Port Harcourt. Time is 1pm.
Gomba will take book enthusiasts through his writing experience, with a focus on his latest work The Lilt Of The Rebel and other of his beautiful literary works. Poet and former Assistant Secretary of Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), Rivers chapter, Tigiri Precious September, will anchor the event, with the Financial Secretary of Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), Rivers, Anne Alalibo moderating the reading.
The Nigerian Literary Society (NLS) is a gathering of literary enthusiasts. Nigerian Literary Society (NLS) is curated by David Chukwueke.
In another development, USD$200 is up for grabs at the African Human Rights Short Story competition. In a press statement signed by Wole Adedoyin, President of the International Human Rights Art Festival – African Chapter (IHRAF Africa) has called on short story writers in Africa to lend their voices on human rights issues in their respective countries. The USD200 worth of prize money split into three is named in honour of South Africa’s Bantu Stephen Biko Prize worth USD$100, Nigeria’s Pius Adebola Adesanmi prize worth USD$75 and Kenyan Binyanvanga Wwainaina Prize worth USD$50.
The statement said “African Human Rights Short Story Prize is open to new, emerging and established short story writers. The Prize is open to submissions of work written in English by writers of any nationality or descent. African Human Rights Short Story Prize aims to promote and support the realization of human rights in Africa. To be duly considered, stories must have human rights at heart.
“The stories can explore any of the following human rights themes: Freedom of Expression, Government Violations, Police Brutality, corruption, forced Eviction, terrorism, Gender Inequality, LGBT Rights, Child Labour, Child Marriage, Domestic Violence, violence and discrimination against women; child abuse; female genital mutilation, ethnic, regional, and religious discrimination, child trafficking, etc.”
Biko (18 December 1946 – 12 September 1977) was a South African anti-apartheid activist. Ideologically an African nationalist and African socialist, he was at the forefront of a grassroots anti-apartheid campaign known as the Black Consciousness Movement during the late 1960s and 1970s. His ideas were articulated in a series of articles published under the pseudonym Frank Talk. Biko became one of the earliest icons of the movement against apartheid, and is regarded as a political martyr and the “Father of Black Consciousness”.
Adesanmi (27 February 1972 – 10 March 2019) was a Nigerian-born Canadian professor, writer, literary critic, satirist, and columnist. He was the author of Naija No Dey Carry Last, a 2015 collection of satirical essays. Adesanmi died on 10 March 2019, when Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed shortly after take-off.
Wainaina (18 January 1971 – 21 May 2019) was a Kenyan, journalist, author, and 2002 winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing. In April 2014, Time magazine included Wainaina in its annual Time 100 as one of the “Most Influential People in the World”. His memoir entitled One Day I Will Write About This Place was published in 2011. In January 2014, in response to a wave of anti-gay laws passed in Africa, Wainaina publicly announced that he was gay, first writing an essay that he described as a “lost chapter” of his 2011 memoir entitled “I am a Homosexual, Mum”, and then tweeting: “I am, for anybody confused or in doubt, a homosexual. Gay, and quite happy.” For more enquiries contact: Wole Adedoyin +2348072673852 (woleadedoyin@gmail.com)
Also, Satire: The Nigeria Book of Miscellaneous Insults has also called for entries. It centres on reconstructive epithets, slurs, offensive and qualifying insults, taunting, verbal abuse, public and secret assaults, emotional and verbal affronts, constructive enantiodrama, implied. rare and amusing insults, cockalorums, snollygosts, pastiches, burlesques and portraying satiric literary figures at home and abroad with satiric importance engaged in polite quarreling. Entries can also focus on situational miscellaneous insults embedded in the state-citizenry relationship and among the citizenry themselves and can be about any sphere of life.
Each contributor can send up to three (3) of such miscellaneous insults written in any form, with satire as the overriding and underpinning framework, with a brief biography of the author written in the third person. AIl (both the work and author’s brief biodata ) should be contained as a single MS word document(only and not more than one thousand words( 1000) forwarded to bookofmiscellaneousinsults@yahoo.com and orpheusfoundation@gmail.com on or before May 31, 2022.