Chimamanda Adichie Will Be The Second African To Receive The Barnes & Noble Writers For Writers Award
In 1996, the Writers for Writers Award was established by Poets & Writers to recognize authors who have given generously to other writers or to the broader literary community. The award was then named after Barnes & Noble in appreciation of the publishing company’s long-standing sponsorship of Poets & Writers.
In 2018, at the Poets & Writers’ annual dinner, themed “In Celebration of Writers,” in New York City, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie will be the second African to receive the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, following Ghanaian poet and Africa Poetry Book Fund (APBF) founder, Kwame Dawes.
Chimamanda is receiving the award for her work with her writing workshop, the Farafina Workshop. Ms. Adichie’s citation mentions that “she supports and encourages younger writers through her work with the Farafina Trust Creative Writing Workshop in Nigeria, regarded by many as the premier writing program in Africa.”
The Farafina Creative Writing Workshop is the highest-profile creative writing workshop on the continent. It annually brings together a group of 2o to 24 writers selected from applications from all over the continent, but mostly from Nigeria. For ten days, these writers are lodged in a hotel in Lagos and guided in fine-tuning their writing. Sessions are facilitated by writers from all over the world, including Binyavanga Wainaina and Aslak Myhre, the National Librarian of Norway.
Other facilitators have, in different years, included Tin House editor Robert Spillman, NLNG Prize for Literature winner Chika Unigwe, mystery novelist Jeffrey Allen, the memoirist Faith Adiele, and Eghosa Imasuen, author of Fine Boys. The workshop usually closes with the Farafina Literary Evening, open to the general public. The workshop, however, was not held in 2017, to enable them to “take this time off to establish a new organisation and structure that will provide a more stable foundation for the workshop and other initiatives.”
Chimamanda will be honoured alongside Steve Cannon and Richard Russo for their work expanding our horizons through their own writing, and their dedication to supporting other writers and to bringing diverse voices into the literary conversation.
