Wole Soyinka

Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Wole Soyinka is renowned as an artist, a humanitarian and a uniquely eloquent voice of the modern African experience. Born in Western Nigeria and educated in Ibadan, Mr. Soyinka continued his studies at the University of Leeds, served as a play-reader at the Royal Court Theatre in London and in 1960 returned to Nigeria, where he founded a theater company. His first plays, The Swamp Dwellers and The Lion and the Jewel, were published in 1963. Since then, he has published numerous works for the theater; two novels, The Interpreters and Season of Anomy; memoirs (Aké: The Years of Childhood); literary essays (Myth, Literature and the African World); political works (The Open Sore of a Continent); and several volumes of poetry. He has taught widely, with academic associations including Emory University, the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, and the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard.

Source: University Programs and Events Planning Resources, December 2005