Photo credit: kreativediadem.com
For the next 11 weeks, award-winning Nigerian poet, essayist, and author of short stories, Mr. Tade Ipadeola will set sail for Iowa to participate in the International Writing Program (IWP) Fall Residency at the University of Iowa.
The renowned residency, courtesy of the United States Department of State is slated to run from September 1 to November 16, 2019, and will see Ipadeola, winner of the 2013 Nigeria Prize for Literature, alongside 28 other accomplished writers from across the globe giving readings and lectures while collaborating with artists from other genres and art forms.
Also, the residency will provide the writers a unique opportunity to form productive inter-cultural bonds with fellow residency participants while they take in the vibrant social and academic life of the University of Iowa as well as the larger American literary scene.
Ipadeola has three published works, including The Sahara Testament, a poetry collection, which won the Nigeria Prize for Literature in 2013 and has been translated into Dutch, French, Spanish and Xhosa. In 2009, he won the Delphic Laurel in Poetry for his Yoruba poem Songbird at the Delphic Games in Jeju, South Korea. In 2012, he translated Paid on Both Sides, the first dramatic work of renowned Anglo-American poet, W.H. Auden, into Yoruba as Lamilami.
To date, 34 Nigerian literary figures have participated in the IWP Fall Residency. Notable among them are Elechi Amadi (1973), Cyprian Ekwensi (1974), Ola Rotimi (1980), Femi Osofisan (1986), Niyi Osundare (1988), Festus Iyayi (1990), Lola Shoneyin (1999), Obari Gomba (2016).
