Wole Soyinka Visits Iowa City

October 20, 2011

The International Writing Program (IWP) at the University of Iowa is delighted to announce that on Sunday, November 6th, the IWP will welcome Nobel Prize-winning author Wole Soyinka to the University of Iowa, where he will take part in two public events. The first, held at 3 p.m. in Shambaugh Auditorium in the University of Iowa Main Library, will honor Mr. Soyinka with the inaugural Rex Honey African Studies Lectureship Award. Presented by the African Studies Program (ASP), an academic division of the University of Iowa’s International Programs, the award is given in memory of Prof. Rex D. Honey and recognizes Mr. Soyinka’s outstanding contribution to world literature and his continuing advocacy of human rights reforms in Nigeria and around the globe. Following the presentation of the award from the ASP, Mr. Soyinka will deliver a lecture and be available to sign volumes of his work.

At 7:30 that evening, Mr. Soyinka will give a public reading at the Englert Theatre in downtown Iowa City. Both events are free and open to the public.

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Wole Soyinka, Playwright, Poet, Novelist, and Essayist

Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, Wole Soyinka has published more than thirty works, and continues to be active on various international artistic and Human Rights organizations.  A Yoruba born in Western Nigeria and educated in Ibadan, Wole Soyinka continued his studies at the University of Leeds, England, earning an Honours degree in English, then joined the Royal Court Theatre, London, as a play-reader.  In 1960, he was awarded a Rockefeller grant and returned to Nigeria, where he researched theatre, and founded two theatre companies. 

Soyinka’s plays include The Swamp Dwellers, The Lion and the Jewel, The Trials of Brother Jero; Jero’s Metamorphosis; A Dance of the Forests; Kongi’s Harvest; Madmen and Specialists; The Strong Breed; The Road; Death and the King's Horseman; A Play of Giants; Requiem for a Futurologist. 

Soyinka has written two novels, The Interpreters and Season of Anomy.  Autobiographical works include The Man Died: Prison Notes; AKE, The Years of Childhood; IBADAN, The Penkelemes Years and  You Must Set Forth at Dawn. Literary essays are collected in, among others, Myth, Literature and the African World and Art, Dialogue and Outrage while his political and other thematic writings appear in The Open Sore of a Continent; The Burden of Memory, Muse of Forgiveness and his BBC Reith Lectures published as The Climate of Fear.  His poems are collected in Idanre and Other Poems; Poems from Prison; A Shuttle in the Crypt; Ogun Abibiman; Mandela’s Earth and Other Poems; SAMARKAND and Other Markets I have Known.

Wole Soyinka has won numerous civic and professional awards, held several university positions, and still lectures extensively. He is currently Professor Emeritus in Comparative Literature, Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria, and President’s Professor at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles.