It was about eight o’clock in the evening. It is summer; the sun is slowly setting giving the sky a combination of pastel blue, grey and gold brightness. Shola was at the bus stop waiting for the bus,

Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Annie Johnson in 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. Her parents divorced when she was only three and she was sent with her younger brother Bailey to live with their grandmother in the small town of Stamps, Arkansas. In Stamps, the young girl experienced the racial discrimination that was the legally […]

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie writes about an Africa far removed from bleak media clichés. Claire Sawers chats to her about superstition and stereotypes Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s voice reflects a life split between America and her home country, Nigeria. So while she’ll enunciate each of her words clearly and slowly, she’s also picked up that uniquely American […]

Chinua Achebe born November 16, 1930, and educated at Government College in Umuahia and at University College of Ibadan, Nigeria. He received a B.A. from London University in 1953 and in 1956 studied broadcasting in London at the BBC. He joined the Nigerian Broadcasting Company in Lagos in 1954, later becoming its director of external […]

Akinwande Oluwole Soyinka, Nigerian playwright, poet, novelist, and critic, first black African who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. Soyinka has been imprisoned several times for his criticism of the government. From the 1970s he has lived long periods in exile. Soyinka’s plays range from comedy to tragedy, and from political satire […]