The Department of English and Film Studies is delighted to welcome Ifeoma Chinwuba, Writer in Residence 2021-22, for a pair of events celebrating her new novel, Sons of the East, published this year by Griots Lounge. Ifeoma is an award-winning writer, whose books include Merchants of Flesh (ANA Prose Prize 2004) Fearless, Waiting for Maria (ANA Prose Prize 2008; longlist of Commonwealth Writers Prize 2008). African Romance (2013) and Head Boy (2019). During her tenure as Writer in Residence at the University of Alberta, Ifeoma edited “The Pandemic And Me,” a collection of short stories from different writers, and wrote Sons of the East, a novel focused on an entrepreneurial Igbo family “beset by rivalry, chauvinism, and infidelity,” and a work that is already receiving glowing reviews.
Please join us on Wednesday, December 20th from 2:00-4:00 in Old Arts Student Lounge (Room 232), as Ifeoma reads from her novel and considers “The Cultural and Intellectual Tradition of Modern African Literature” in conversation with author Darlington Chibueze Anuonye. Anuonye is a PhD student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the curator of Selfies and Signatures: An Afro Anthology of Short Stories, co-editor (with Ezechi Onyerionwu) of Daybreak: An Anthology of Nigerian Short Fiction and editor of the international anthology of writings, Through the Eye of a Needle: Art in the Time of Coronavirus, and The Good Teacher: A Collection of Essays in Honour of Isidore Diala and Samuel Anthony Itodo. “Unbound,” an anthology of contemporary Nigerian poetry, co-edited with Nduka Otiono, 2011 UAlberta PhD graduate, award-winning writer and Director of the Institute of African Studies at Carleton University, is forthcoming in 2024 in North America and Nigeria by Griots Lounge and Narrative Landscape. This event will be hybrid: you are welcome to join us in person in the Salter Reading Room or to join online.
On December 20th from 7:00-8:30 Ifeoma will launch Sons of the East at Audrey’s Books, 10702 Jasper Avenue. This event will be in-person only. Copies of Sons of the East will be available for purchase. Please join us just ahead of the holidays to celebrate Ifeoma Chinwuba’s new novel.
These events are supported by the Department of English and Film Studies and by SpokenWeb.