2022 and Nigerian Writers: The Year in Review
Happy New Year! The world has rolled into 2023; here’s how Nigerian writers fared in 2022.
March
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Emmanuel Iduma was one of the eight winners of the 2022 Windham-Campbell. The prizes are awarded in four categories; fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama. Iduma’s award was for nonfiction. Iduma is the co-founder of Saraba magazine and author of The Sound of Things to Come and A Stranger’s Pose. His writing was described as ‘elegant, meditative vignettes that integrate art criticism, canny observation, and lyrical dispatches.’
May
Chimamanda Adichie was given an honorary doctorate by the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. The university’s rector, Vincent Blondel, described Adichie as a writer who “develops a discourse on gender equality rooted in singular experience and is universal in scope. She focuses on the experience of differences and makes us feel the fragility of what we sometimes hold to be true without having questioned it.”
Professor Akachi Ezeigbo was announced as the winner of the Folon-Nichols Award for Excellence in Creative Writing by the African Literature Association. She won the award for her “career-long work, cherishing and contributing to both African literature and the freedom of Expression.”
September
Rose Okeke won the 2022 James Currey Prize for African Literature for her manuscript Child of the Corn. The prize is for unpublished works of fiction in English about Africa or Africans.
October
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Chimamanda Adichie was given the W. E. B. Du Bois Medal, Harvard University highest honour for contributions to African and African American culture.
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The Nigeria Prize for Literature (the NLNG Prize for Literature) is given for prose fiction, poetry, drama, and children’s literature. In 2022 the award was for poetry and was won by Romeo Oriogon for his book of poems Nomad.
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Sylva Nze Ifedigbo was awarded the 2022 Chinua Achebe Prize for Literature for his book Believers and Hustlers.
December
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Wole Soyinka received the 2022 Center for Fiction Lifetime of Excellence in Fiction Award. The award ‘honors a writer who, through their exceptional body of work, has significantly shaped our culture and perspective.’
Nigerian writers did well in 2022; if we have left anyone out, let us know by posting a comment. We look forward to more outstanding achievements in 2023.
