Lola shoneyin biography of abraham
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She co-founded Infusion, a monthly gathering for music, art, and culture in Abuja, and served as a judge for the 2018 Caine Prize for African Writing. . She currently lives in Lagos, Nigeria, where she manages the annual Aké Arts and Book Festival. Along with writing books, she has also contributed articles to The Scotsman, The Guardian, and The Times on topics like racism, polygamous marriage in Nigeria, the Boko Haram terrorist organisation, and the election of current President Muhammadu Buhari.
Shoneyin served as the deputy principal at a secondary school in Abuja, Nigeria, where she also taught English.
She is the only female and the youngest of six kids. In April 2014, she was named to the Hay Festival’s Africa39 list of 39 Sub-Saharan African writers under 40 who have the potential to shape the future of African literature. An utterly gripping read.”
—Patricia Duncker, author of Miss Webster and Chérif
”For a first novel, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives surprises as a powerful, mature and absorbing work of fiction.
At the moment, she, her husband, and their four kids all reside in Lagos (2 boys and 2 girls).
Publications
Novels
- The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, London: Serpent’s Tail, May 2010, which was translated into seven languages, published in Italian as Prudenti Come Serpenti.
- Nostalgia is an Extreme Sport: An essay from the collection, Of This Our Country
Short Stories
- “Woman in Her Season,” Post Express Newspapers, 1996.
Poetry
- So All the Time I Was Sitting on an Egg (1998)
- Song of a River Bird, Ovalonion House (Nigeria, 2002).
- For the Love of Flight (2010)
Children’s Books
- Mayowa and the Masquerade, July 2010, published in the US in 2020;
- Do As You Are Told.
- Baji; and Iyaji, the housegirl
Scholarly Study
- Abiola, Emmanuel.
In August 1999, she travelled to Iowa, USA, for the famed Iowa International Writers Program. “Beyond Gender Allegory: A Postcolonial Reading of Lola Shoneyin’s Poetry.” Ibadan Journal of English Studies 7 (2018): 155–170.
- Jegede, O. B. Subversive (re) writing and body poetics in Lola Shoneyin’s “So all the time I was sitting on an egg.” Ibadan Journal of English Studies 7 (2018), 207–224.
Awards and Nomination
- The 2011 Orange Prize
- The 2011 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award.
- She won two Association of Nigerian Authors Awards.
- Hay Festival’s Africa39 list features 39 Sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 with the potential and talent to define trends in African literature.
- Ken Saro-Wiwa Award for prose in Nigeria.
- African Literary Person of the Year by Brittle Paper
Net Worth
Her estimated net worth is currently unavailable.
Social Media Handles
Instagram: lolashoneyin
Twitter: @lolashoneyin
Lola Shoneyin
The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives (William Morrow, 2010)
When Baba Segi awoke with a bellyache for the sixth day in a row, he knew it was time to do something drastic about his fourth wife’s childlessness.
Meet Baba Segi .
She is currently the director of the Nigerian non-governmental organisation Book Buzz Foundation, whose primary goals include fostering literacy through the development of reading programmes for children and reading spaces, as well as the monthly Ake Arts and Book Festival.
Personal Life
She is married to Olaokun Soyinka, a medical doctor and the son of Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka.
In 1995, the Post Express (a British newspaper) published one of her earliest works, a short tale about a Nigerian woman who left her husband and married an Austrian woman. and who harbors a secret that will expose shocking truths about them all.
“A funny and moving story told with love and compassion … a jewel of a novel.”
—Petina Gappah, author of An Elegy for Easterly
”It is a book you’ll want to eat in a sitting – and then start again.”
—Diran Adebayo, author of Some Kind of Black
”A rich debut… an engrossing and beautifully written domestic tale of polygamy and rivalry set in her native Nigeria.”
—Harper’s Bazaar
”This first novel is a compelling, unsettling tale of a polygamous household, and the women within Baba Segi’s walls.
Ibadan Journal of English Studies 7 (2018): 497–504.
Shoneyin is the founder and director of the Book Buzz Foundation, which promotes arts and culture.
Shoneyin’s first novel was completed in 2000, followed by her unpublished second novel, Harlot. Her third, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, was published in 2010 and adapted for stage by Rotimi Babatunde, performed at the Arcola Theatre in London.
In 2010, Cassava Republic Press published Shoneyin’s third poetry collection, For the Love of Flight, and her children’s book, Mayowa and the Masquerades.
Shoneyin’s sharply written portrait of a family and a nation gripped by the past yet surging into modernity, manages to be funny, disconcerting and violent all at once.