Speakers
Keynote Speakers | Caucus Speakers | VIPs
Keynote Speakers
Teju Cole
Teju Cole is a novelist, art historian, photographer, and Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College. He was born in the US in 1975 to Nigerian parents, and raised in Nigeria. He is the author of two books: a novella, Every Day is for the Thief, a national bestseller and New York Times Editors’ Pick; and a novel, Open City, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Rosenthal Award, the Internationaler Literaturpreis, and was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is Photography Critic for the New York Times Magazine, and is currently working on a book about Lagos.
Bernardine Evaristo
Award-winning British writer Bernardine Evaristo is the author of seven books. She is also an editor, critic, dramatist and essayist. Her writing spans the genres of prose novels, verse-novels, a novel-with-verse, a novella, poetry, non-fiction, literary criticism and radio and theatre drama. Her latest novel, Mr Loverman, is about a 74 year old Caribbean London man who is closet homosexual (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin, 2013 & Akashic Books, USA, 2014). Her writing is characterised by experimentation, daring and subverting the myths of various Afro-diasporic histories and identities. Her fiction, poetry and essays are also published widely in a variety of publications and anthologies. www.bevaristo.com
Her books are: MR LOVERMAN (Penguin, 2013), HELLO MUM (Penguin 2010), LARA (Bloodaxe 2009), BLONDE ROOTS (Penguin 2008), SOUL TOURISTS (Penguin 2005), THE EMPEROR’S BABE (Penguin 2001), the first version of LARA (ARP 1997), ISLAND OF ABRAHAM (Peepal Tree, 1994).
Noah Sow
Noah Sow, born and raised in Bavaria, is a writer, conceptual artist, musician, author, producer, theorist and activist with a focus on art, critical media analysis, de/constructions of »normalities« as well as counter-racism economy and economics. Her book DEUTSCHLAND SCHWARZ WEIß has become a standard in the analysis of and education about structural racism in Germany. In 2001, Hamburg-based Noah Sow founded Germany's first Black media watchdog, »der braune mob«. She is holding lectures, presentations and readings around the world, performing and publishing music on her record label Jeanne Dark Records and exhibiting conceptual visual arts. Noah Sow is a household name to many Germans from her various television appearances, radio personality shows and radio plays.
Web page: www.noahsow.de
Book Publications (exc.): 2008 DEUTSCHLAND SCHWARZ WEIß (Random House), 2011 co-author: WIE RASSISMUS AUS WÖRTERN SPRICHT – (K)ERBEN DES KOLONIALISMUS IM WISSENSARCHIV DEUTSCHE SPRACHE (Unrast), 2015 co-author: KUNST UND POLITIK (Guernica-Gesellschaft): SCHWARZE WISSENSPRODUKTION ALS ANGEEIGNETE PROFILIERUNGSRESSOURCE UND DER SYSTEMATISCHE AUSSCHLUSS VON ERFAHRUNGSWISSEN AUS KUNST- UND KULTURSTUDIEN
Françoise Vergès
Françoise Vergès holds the Chair “Global South(s),” Collège d’études mondiales, Paris. She has written extensively on vernacular practices, memories of colonial slavery and colonialism, psychoanalysis, Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, processes of creolization in the Indian Ocean world, museums and intangible cultures.
She has developed the notion of a “museum without objects” to visualize the lives of the “anonymous.” She has collaborated with filmmakers and artists (Isaac Julien, Yinka Shonibare, Kader Attia…), was project advisor for Documenta 11, organized for the 2012 Paris Triennial the program “The Slave in Le Louvre.”
Binyawanga Wainaina
@Binyavangaw: Kenyan author, publisher, cultural worker.
He is the founding editor of one of Africa’s leading literary institutions Kwani? (www.kwani.org). Binyavanga’s How to Write About Africa attracted wide attention. His memoir, One Day I Will Write About This Place has been translated into several languages. In 2007, Binyavanga was nominated by the World Economic Forum as a "Young Global Leader". He declined the award.
Binyavanga Wainaina has been a Sterling Brown Fellow at Williams College, Massachusetts, a Lannan Fellow, a Visiting Writer at Union College, NY. Until 2012, he was the Director of the Chinua Achebe Center for African Writers and Artists at Bard College.
For over eleven years Binyavanga has sought, worked with, published, mentored and promoted some of Africa’s most exciting new literary talent. In 2014, he came out publicly as gay. In 2014 he was named as by Time magazine as one of 100 most influential people in the world.
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Caucus Speakers
WOCALA Luncheon Speaker: Fahamisha P. Brown
Fahamisha Patrica Brown is Professor Emerita of Urban Studies and Human Services at Metropolitan College of New York and chair of the Publicity and Media Relations Committee of the African Literature Association. She is the author of Performing the Word: African American Poetry as Vernacular Culture (Rutgers University Press, 1999). Her major research interests include poetry of the African world with an emphasis on poetry as an expression of vernacular culture, literature in performance, and Black women writers. She is also a performing artist and has directed a production of Langston Hughes' play Don't You Want to Be Free? In addition, she conducts workshops on black song traditions for children and adults and is a community activist with a focus on black art and culture and black women's issues.
FRACALA Luncheon Speaker: Papa Samba Diop
Papa Samba Diop is professor of African literature at the University of Paris XI.
TRACALA Luncheon Speaker: Anne Adams
Anne Adams is professor emerita of Africana Studies and Comparative Literature from Cornell University. She has also lectured and held visiting positions at several universities in Africa as well as in Germany (University of Bayreuth and Humboldt University). Following retirement, she served for five years as director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Memorial Centre for Pan-African Culture, in Accra, Ghana.
Her areas of research and publication are African/Diaspora women’s writing and Afro-German cultural studies. Publications in the former area include Ngambika: Studies of Women in African Literature (1986) co-edited with Carole Boyce Davies; The Legacy of Efua Sutherland (2007) co-edited with Esi Sutherland-Addy; and Essays in Honour of Ama Ata Aidoo at 70 (2012). In the area of Afro-German cultural studies Anne Adams has lectured and published articles. Most significantly, she is translator of two books by Afro-Germans. The first, Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out , 1992 (orig. Farbe Bekennen: Afro-Deutsche Frauen auf den Spuren ihrer Geschichte, 1986), Oguntoye et. al. eds., has contributed to the expansion of studies of African Diaspora in Europe for English-speaking scholars. The second Afro-German translation is Blues in Black and White , 2003 (orig. Grenzenlos und unverschämt, 1997), by May Ayim, published posthumously, brings to English readers the unpublished writings of the acknowledged pioneer in the awakening of Afro-German identity. Adams’s new translation of Afro-German writings, Brazen and Borderless: Afro-Germans Talk Back, the first in English since the two above-mentioned texts, is scheduled for publication in 2015. In addition to her own translations, Anne Adams has consulted for Rowohlt Verlag on the German translations of the novels of Toni Morrison.
LHCALA Caucus Speaker: Zézé Gamboa
Zézé Gamboa was born in Luanda, Angola, in 1955. Between 1974 and 1980 he directedtelevisionprograms, and in 1984 he graduatedfrom Néciphone in Paris with a degree in soundengineering. His 1991 documentary, MOPIOPIO, SOPRO DE ANGOLA (Mopiopio, Breathof Angola), receivedseveralawardsatthe FESPACO andatthe Milan African Film Festivals. His 1998 documentary, DISSIDENCE, presents a modern historyof Angola through a lookatdissidentsfromtwobelligerentparties. His firstfull-lengthfictional film, O HERÓI [The Hero], openedthe 2005 New York New Directors New Films Festival. ZézéGamboaconsidershimself in the camp of African filmmakerswhoseetheirworkascontributingdirectly tothetaskof national reconstruction.
Filmography:
MOPIOPIO, SOPRO DE ANGOLA [Mopiopio, Breathof Angola] (1991);
DISSIDENCE (1998);
BURNED BY BLUE (1998);
O DESASSOSSEGO DE PESSOA (1999);
O HERÓI [The Hero] (2004);
5 FILMS ABOUT AIDS (2007);
L’AFRIQUE VUE PAR… [Africa Seen by…] – BOM DIA AFRICA (2009);
O GRANDE KILAPY(2010).
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VIPs
Wole Soyinka
In 1993 Wole Soyinka was awarded the honorary doctorate by the University of Bayreuth. Wole Soyinka, in full Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka,is a Nigerian playwright, poet, author, teacher and political activist. Born on the 13th July 1934 at Abeokuta in Western Nigeria, Soyinka is the second of six children born into the family of Samuel Ayodele Soyinka and Grace Eniola Soyinka. After attending St. Peter’s Primary School, he enrolled at the Abeokuta Grammar School, where he won several prizes for literary compositions. In 1952, he graduated from the Government College and then studied English literature, Greek and Western history at the University of Ibadan. Two years later, he moved to England and continued to pursue his education at the University of Leeds. There, he served as the editor of THE EAGLE; the University’s magazine. Later, in 1973, he earned his doctorate degree.From 1960 onward, he taught at many universities. Residing mainly in the United States, he worked first at Cornell University and then at Emory University in Atlanta. From 1975 to 1999, he was a Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Ife, which was later named ObafemiAwolowo University. Soyinka has also been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In the fall of 2007 he was appointed Professor in Residence at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, US.Moreover, Wole Soyinka headed theatre groups at various Nigerian universities.Soyinka is known as one of Africa’s and the World’s greatest writers and he was the first African to be awarded the NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE,in 1986.
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-> open Full Program & Addendum as PDF (7.2 MB)
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Keynote Speakers | Caucus Speakers | VIPs
Keynote Speakers
Teju Cole
Teju Cole is a novelist, art historian, photographer, and Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College. He was born in the US in 1975 to Nigerian parents, and raised in Nigeria. He is the author of two books: a novella, Every Day is for the Thief, a national bestseller and New York Times Editors’ Pick; and a novel, Open City, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Rosenthal Award, the Internationaler Literaturpreis, and was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is Photography Critic for the New York Times Magazine, and is currently working on a book about Lagos.Bernardine Evaristo
Award-winning British writer Bernardine Evaristo is the author of seven books. She is also an editor, critic, dramatist and essayist. Her writing spans the genres of prose novels, verse-novels, a novel-with-verse, a novella, poetry, non-fiction, literary criticism and radio and theatre drama. Her latest novel, Mr Loverman, is about a 74 year old Caribbean London man who is closet homosexual (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin, 2013 & Akashic Books, USA, 2014). Her writing is characterised by experimentation, daring and subverting the myths of various Afro-diasporic histories and identities. Her fiction, poetry and essays are also published widely in a variety of publications and anthologies. www.bevaristo.comHer books are: MR LOVERMAN (Penguin, 2013), HELLO MUM (Penguin 2010), LARA (Bloodaxe 2009), BLONDE ROOTS (Penguin 2008), SOUL TOURISTS (Penguin 2005), THE EMPEROR’S BABE (Penguin 2001), the first version of LARA (ARP 1997), ISLAND OF ABRAHAM (Peepal Tree, 1994).
Noah Sow
Noah Sow, born and raised in Bavaria, is a writer, conceptual artist, musician, author, producer, theorist and activist with a focus on art, critical media analysis, de/constructions of »normalities« as well as counter-racism economy and economics. Her book DEUTSCHLAND SCHWARZ WEIß has become a standard in the analysis of and education about structural racism in Germany. In 2001, Hamburg-based Noah Sow founded Germany's first Black media watchdog, »der braune mob«. She is holding lectures, presentations and readings around the world, performing and publishing music on her record label Jeanne Dark Records and exhibiting conceptual visual arts. Noah Sow is a household name to many Germans from her various television appearances, radio personality shows and radio plays.Web page: www.noahsow.de
Book Publications (exc.): 2008 DEUTSCHLAND SCHWARZ WEIß (Random House), 2011 co-author: WIE RASSISMUS AUS WÖRTERN SPRICHT – (K)ERBEN DES KOLONIALISMUS IM WISSENSARCHIV DEUTSCHE SPRACHE (Unrast), 2015 co-author: KUNST UND POLITIK (Guernica-Gesellschaft): SCHWARZE WISSENSPRODUKTION ALS ANGEEIGNETE PROFILIERUNGSRESSOURCE UND DER SYSTEMATISCHE AUSSCHLUSS VON ERFAHRUNGSWISSEN AUS KUNST- UND KULTURSTUDIEN
Françoise Vergès
Françoise Vergès holds the Chair “Global South(s),” Collège d’études mondiales, Paris. She has written extensively on vernacular practices, memories of colonial slavery and colonialism, psychoanalysis, Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, processes of creolization in the Indian Ocean world, museums and intangible cultures.
She has developed the notion of a “museum without objects” to visualize the lives of the “anonymous.” She has collaborated with filmmakers and artists (Isaac Julien, Yinka Shonibare, Kader Attia…), was project advisor for Documenta 11, organized for the 2012 Paris Triennial the program “The Slave in Le Louvre.”
Binyawanga Wainaina
@Binyavangaw: Kenyan author, publisher, cultural worker.He is the founding editor of one of Africa’s leading literary institutions Kwani? (www.kwani.org). Binyavanga’s How to Write About Africa attracted wide attention. His memoir, One Day I Will Write About This Place has been translated into several languages. In 2007, Binyavanga was nominated by the World Economic Forum as a "Young Global Leader". He declined the award.
Binyavanga Wainaina has been a Sterling Brown Fellow at Williams College, Massachusetts, a Lannan Fellow, a Visiting Writer at Union College, NY. Until 2012, he was the Director of the Chinua Achebe Center for African Writers and Artists at Bard College.
For over eleven years Binyavanga has sought, worked with, published, mentored and promoted some of Africa’s most exciting new literary talent. In 2014, he came out publicly as gay. In 2014 he was named as by Time magazine as one of 100 most influential people in the world.
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Caucus Speakers
WOCALA Luncheon Speaker: Fahamisha P. Brown
Fahamisha Patrica Brown is Professor Emerita of Urban Studies and Human Services at Metropolitan College of New York and chair of the Publicity and Media Relations Committee of the African Literature Association. She is the author of Performing the Word: African American Poetry as Vernacular Culture (Rutgers University Press, 1999). Her major research interests include poetry of the African world with an emphasis on poetry as an expression of vernacular culture, literature in performance, and Black women writers. She is also a performing artist and has directed a production of Langston Hughes' play Don't You Want to Be Free? In addition, she conducts workshops on black song traditions for children and adults and is a community activist with a focus on black art and culture and black women's issues. FRACALA Luncheon Speaker: Papa Samba Diop
Papa Samba Diop is professor of African literature at the University of Paris XI.
TRACALA Luncheon Speaker: Anne Adams
Anne Adams is professor emerita of Africana Studies and Comparative Literature from Cornell University. She has also lectured and held visiting positions at several universities in Africa as well as in Germany (University of Bayreuth and Humboldt University). Following retirement, she served for five years as director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Memorial Centre for Pan-African Culture, in Accra, Ghana.
Her areas of research and publication are African/Diaspora women’s writing and Afro-German cultural studies. Publications in the former area include Ngambika: Studies of Women in African Literature (1986) co-edited with Carole Boyce Davies; The Legacy of Efua Sutherland (2007) co-edited with Esi Sutherland-Addy; and Essays in Honour of Ama Ata Aidoo at 70 (2012). In the area of Afro-German cultural studies Anne Adams has lectured and published articles. Most significantly, she is translator of two books by Afro-Germans. The first, Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out , 1992 (orig. Farbe Bekennen: Afro-Deutsche Frauen auf den Spuren ihrer Geschichte, 1986), Oguntoye et. al. eds., has contributed to the expansion of studies of African Diaspora in Europe for English-speaking scholars. The second Afro-German translation is Blues in Black and White , 2003 (orig. Grenzenlos und unverschämt, 1997), by May Ayim, published posthumously, brings to English readers the unpublished writings of the acknowledged pioneer in the awakening of Afro-German identity. Adams’s new translation of Afro-German writings, Brazen and Borderless: Afro-Germans Talk Back, the first in English since the two above-mentioned texts, is scheduled for publication in 2015. In addition to her own translations, Anne Adams has consulted for Rowohlt Verlag on the German translations of the novels of Toni Morrison.
LHCALA Caucus Speaker: Zézé Gamboa
Zézé Gamboa was born in Luanda, Angola, in 1955. Between 1974 and 1980 he directedtelevisionprograms, and in 1984 he graduatedfrom Néciphone in Paris with a degree in soundengineering. His 1991 documentary, MOPIOPIO, SOPRO DE ANGOLA (Mopiopio, Breathof Angola), receivedseveralawardsatthe FESPACO andatthe Milan African Film Festivals. His 1998 documentary, DISSIDENCE, presents a modern historyof Angola through a lookatdissidentsfromtwobelligerentparties. His firstfull-lengthfictional film, O HERÓI [The Hero], openedthe 2005 New York New Directors New Films Festival. ZézéGamboaconsidershimself in the camp of African filmmakerswhoseetheirworkascontributingdirectly tothetaskof national reconstruction.
Filmography:
MOPIOPIO, SOPRO DE ANGOLA [Mopiopio, Breathof Angola] (1991);
DISSIDENCE (1998);
BURNED BY BLUE (1998);
O DESASSOSSEGO DE PESSOA (1999);
O HERÓI [The Hero] (2004);
5 FILMS ABOUT AIDS (2007);
L’AFRIQUE VUE PAR… [Africa Seen by…] – BOM DIA AFRICA (2009);
O GRANDE KILAPY(2010).
*****************************
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VIPs
Wole Soyinka
In 1993 Wole Soyinka was awarded the honorary doctorate by the University of Bayreuth. Wole Soyinka, in full Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka,is a Nigerian playwright, poet, author, teacher and political activist. Born on the 13th July 1934 at Abeokuta in Western Nigeria, Soyinka is the second of six children born into the family of Samuel Ayodele Soyinka and Grace Eniola Soyinka. After attending St. Peter’s Primary School, he enrolled at the Abeokuta Grammar School, where he won several prizes for literary compositions. In 1952, he graduated from the Government College and then studied English literature, Greek and Western history at the University of Ibadan. Two years later, he moved to England and continued to pursue his education at the University of Leeds. There, he served as the editor of THE EAGLE; the University’s magazine. Later, in 1973, he earned his doctorate degree.From 1960 onward, he taught at many universities. Residing mainly in the United States, he worked first at Cornell University and then at Emory University in Atlanta. From 1975 to 1999, he was a Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Ife, which was later named ObafemiAwolowo University. Soyinka has also been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In the fall of 2007 he was appointed Professor in Residence at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, US.Moreover, Wole Soyinka headed theatre groups at various Nigerian universities.Soyinka is known as one of Africa’s and the World’s greatest writers and he was the first African to be awarded the NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE,in 1986.
*****************************
-- top --
-> open Full Program & Addendum as PDF (7.2 MB)
You are on the site optimized for smartphones and tablets. Click here for the mainpage (Flashplugin and a screen resolution from at least 800 px (width) required).
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