Funso Aiyejina

Funso Aiyejina (born 1949 in Ososo, Edo State, Nigeria) is a Nigerian poet, short story writer, playwright, and Dean of Humanities and Education, at the University of the West Indies.^[1] His collection of short fiction, The Legend of the Rockhills and Other Stories, won the 2000 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Best First Book (Africa).^[2]

Biography

Aiyejina graduated from the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) in Nigeria, Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia, in Canada, and the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad.^[3] He taught for more than a decade at Obafemi Awolowo University,^[4] and since 1990 at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad & Tobago. In 1995-6, he was Fulbright Lecturer in Creative Writing at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri.

Writing

Aiyejina's poetry and short stories have been published in many international journals and anthologies including The Anchor Book of African Stories, Literature Without Borders, Kiss and Quarrel: Yoruba/English - Strategies for Mediation, The New African Poetry, and The Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry (1999), in which 1999 publication he was described as "one of Nigeria’s finest satirists". His stories and plays have been read and dramatized on the radio in Nigeria and England.^[2]^[3]

He won the Association of Nigerian Authors’ Poetry Prize in 1989 for his first book of poetry, A Letter to Lynda and Other Poems (1988). His first book of fiction, The Legend of the Rockhills and Other Stories (1999), won Best First Book (Africa), Commonwealth Writers' Prize, 2000. Reviewing his 2004 poetry collection, I, The Supreme and Other Poems, Jennifer Rahim stated: "All of Aiyejina’s books to date demonstrate a concentrated interest with the historical, cultural and political life of Africa, particularly his native Nigeria. What is also evident is an emerging engagement with the continent’s expanded diaspora. His writing, in other words, manifests a blossoming black diasporic poetics.... As outsider/insider to the Caribbean landscape and culture, he is awed by the miracle of African cultural survival and transformation."^[5]

He is a widely published critic on African and West African literature and culture. He is particularly notable for his work on the writing of Earl Lovelace, having been the editor of A Place in the World: Essays and Tributes in Honour of Earl Lovelace @ 70 (2008) and of Earl Lovelace: Growing in the Dark (Selected Essays) (2003). Aiyejina is also editor of Self-Portrait: Interviews with Ten West Indian Writers and Two Critics (2003) and co-editor (with Paula Morgan) of Caribbean Literature in a Global Context (2006). His play The Character Who Walked Out On His Author has been performed in Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Nigeria.

Works

Poetry

A Letter to Lynda and Other Poems, Saros International Publishers, 1988 (Association of Nigerian Authors Prize, 1989); Lightning Source Inc, 2006, ISBN 978-1-85657-106-7
I, The Supreme and Other Poems (2004)

Gerald Moore, Ulli Beier, ed. (2007). "Let Us Remember". The Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-042472-0.

Short stories

The Legend of the Rockhills and other stories, TSAR, 1999, ISBN 978-0-920661-78-9

Plays

The Character Who Walked Out On His Author,

As editor

A Place in the World: Essays and Tributes in Honour of Earl Lovelace (2008)
Funso Aiyejina, Paula Morgan, ed. (2006). Caribbean Literature in a Global Context. Lexicon.
Earl Lovelace: Growing in the Dark (Selected Essays)(2003)
Self-Portrait: Interviews with Ten West Indian Writers and Two Critics, University of the West Indies, 2003, ISBN 978-976-620-182-1