Thursday, September 03, 2009

UNCW Presents hosts award-winning Nigerian novelist and poet Chris Abani as part of the Leadership Lecture Series at 7 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 14 in Kenan Auditorium. Abani's lecture, "Stories of Struggle, Stories of Hope: Art, Politics, and Human Rights," is co-sponsored by University College as part of the Synergy Common Reading Program, UNCW Student Media, and the Department of Creative Writing. The talk will be followed by a question and answer period.

Abani, a professor of creative writing at the University of California Riverside, explores the struggles of socially engaged fiction in addressing what it means to be human, who decides what makes up our humanity, and if there is a standard human against whom everyone is judged.

Born in Nigeria in 1966, Abani had his first novel, Masters of the Board, a political thriller about a foiled Nigerian coup, published when he was just 16. The ruling regime at the time considered the novel a threat to national security and two years later imprisoned Abani. Jailed and tortured twice more, Abani has turned his experiences of political persecution into powerful poetry and prose.

Abani has authored four collections of poetry and five works of prose, among which are the novella Song for Night, about a West African child soldier who has lost his voice, and the best-selling novel Graceland, a tale about an Elvis-impersonating boy growing up in a Nigerian ghetto. "Chris Abani," Donna Seaman writes in BookLust, "is a writer of mesmerizing powers, embracing warmth, and transcendent compassion."

A 2009 Guggenheim Fellow, Abani is also the recipient of the PEN USA Freedom-to-Write Award, the Prince Claus Award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a California Book Award, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a PEN Beyond the Margins Award, and the PEN Hemingway Book Prize. His most recent novel, Virgin of Flames, was published in 2007. In addition to being a writer, Abani is a publisher and heads the poetry imprint of Black Goat Press.

Tickets are $9 for the public and free to UNCW students, faculty and staff. For tickets and information, call Kenan Box Office 910.962.3500 or visit www.uncw.edu/presents. Box office hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday and one hour prior to the event.

The Leadership Lecture Series serves as a forum for intellectual inquiry and discussion offering the campus and community opportunities to discuss and explore the political, cultural and economic trends and issues that shape and affect our communities today. By inviting a speaker to the campus, the university does not endorse any particular position.