2017 Ake Arts and Book Festival holds November

The fifth edition of Ake Arts and Book Festival will take place at the Arts and Cultural Centre, Kuto, Abeokuta between November, 14-18, 2017.

According to a statement released by its organisers, this year’s theme is ‘This F-Word’ and ‘conversations will focus largely on creative women doing amazing things both on the African continent and beyond.’

The organisers says the event will bring ‘a creative whirlwind to the rocky hills of Abeokuta.’

”Ake Festival is five days of cultural immersion. 100 Novelists, poets, dancers, actors, illustrators, activists, musicians, artists and thinkers (will) storm the historic city and share their work and their ideas.”

”As part of our aim to develop, promote and celebrate creativity on the African continent, Ake Festival 2017 will feature 14 authors in 7 book chats, 1 art exhibition with 5 incredible female artists, 1 stage play, 1 in-depth interview, school visits, 14 stimulating panel discussions, 4 film screenings, 1 creative writing workshop, 1 music concert with 5 amazing women, a tour of historic sites and a night of poetry performance. Book-lovers and visitors will be thrilled by the range of affordable books at the Ake Festival Bookstore,” organisers said.
They added that “Ama Ata Aidoo will tell us about her life, accomplishments and works. The event will be hosted by her daughter, popular literary blogger, Kinna Likimani. Such a rare treat! South Africa’s Koleka Putuma, Poetra Asantewa from Ghana, Wana Udobang, Titilope Sonuga and Mariam Bukar from Nigeria.”

”This year’s art exhibition will feature the works of 5 incredible Nigerian women whose work will focus on ‘The Female Form’. Award winning 2016 film I Am Not Your Negro directed by Raoul Peck will be screened as the Film of the Festival.”

source: https://www.premiumtimesng.com/entertainment/artsbooks/242822-2017-ake-arts-book-festival-holds-november.html

Prolific writer Oyeyemi shortlisted for BBC short story award

A prolific British writer, Helen Oyeyemi, has been shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award.

Ms. Oyeyemi, born on December 10, 1984, is a novelist and writer of short stories.

One of her stories, “If a Book Is Locked There’s Probably a Good Reason for That, Don’t You Think? ” which has been selected has been described by the judges as “brilliant.”

Meanwhile, her story will be competing against four other works: Benjamin Markovits’ “The Collector,” Cynan Jones’s “The Edge of the Shoal,” Will Eaves’s “Murmur,” and ”The Waken,” by Jenni Fagan.

The judges to select the eventual winner include Eimear McBride, Baileys Prize winner for A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing, and Joanna Trollope, a release on Brittle Paper indicates.

The panel has described their choices as “a veritable festival of ideas about identity, the innate and the capacity of both for transformation…or not.”

”These are stories about what is hidden, what is revealed, what can be lost and what will remain. While they inhabit very different imaginative, linguistic, political and artistic landscapes, these are the ideas that bind them together and have made each one such a pleasurable discovery,” the panel said.

”All five of our shortlisted writers have embraced the freedom that short fiction offers and all their stories sing out, enduring, bold, humane and moving. However different in style and shape, they prove just how exciting and current the short story is in the UK just now.”

Founded in 2005 by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, NESTA, with support from the BBC Radio and Prospect magazine, the BBC National Short Story Award rewards a superlative short story with 15,000 pounds.

The 2017 award reportedly received 600 entries.

The winner will be announced on 3 October.

MS. Oyeyemi’s latest book, the story collection What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, was released in 2016.

Ms. Oyeyemi wrote her first novel, The Icarus Girl, while still at school studying for her A-levels at Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School. 

Also, according to a statement on her website, while studying social and political sciences at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, two of her plays, Juniper’s Whitening and Victimese, wereperformed by fellow students to critical acclaim and subsequently published by Methuen.