Hey Brittle Paper readers and followers! We’re excited to announce the second installment of our #WeTurnToBooks series on Instagram Live, happening throughout the month of June. Our line-up this time around includes Nnedi Okorafor, Kiru Taye, Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, and Ayesha Harruna Attah — all authors who have recently published a new book, or have a book to be published soon.
For the first installment of the series, our conversations with Jeanne-Marie Jackson-Awotwi, Mukoma wa Ngũgĩ, Ato Quayson, E.C. Osondu, and Chibundu Onuzo focused on the role literature can play in times of crisis. For the second installment, we’ll be chatting with these authors about their new work, writers and books that inspire them, what they love most about being a writer, and much more.
The schedule for the upcoming #WeTurnToBook series is below. Mark your calendars and head over to Brittle Paper’s Instagram on these dates and times!
Wednesday, June 3, 12pm GMT
Nnedi Okorafor
Nnedi Okorafor is a Nigerian-American author of Africanfuturism and Africanjujuism for children and adults. Her works include Who Fears Death (in development at HBO into a TV series), the Binti novella trilogy, The Book of Phoenix, the Akata books, and Lagoon. She is the winner of Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Locus and Lodestar Awards and her debut novel Zahrah the Windseeker won the prestigious Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature. Her next novel, Ikenga, will be in stores August 2020, and her next novella, Remote Control, in January 2021.
Nnedi has also written comics for Marvel, including Black Panther: Long Live the King and Wakanda Forever (featuring the Dora Milaje), and the Shuri series; an Africanfuturist comic series Laguardia (from Dark Horse); and her short memoir Broken Places and Outer Spaces. Nnedi is also cowriter of the adaptation of Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed with Viola Davis and Kenyan film director Wanuri Kahiu.
Nnedi holds a PhD (literature) and two MAs (journalism and literature). She lives with her daughter Anyaugo and family in Illinois.
Sunday, June 14, 4pm GMT
Kiru Taye
Kiru writes passionate romance and sensual erotica stories featuring African characters whether on the continent or in the Diaspora. When she’s not writing you can find her either immersed in a good book or catching up with friends and family. She currently lives in the South of England with her husband and three children.
Kiru is a founding member of Romance Writers of West Africa. In 2011, her debut romance novella, His Treasure, won the Book of the Year at the Love Romances Café Awards. She is the 2015 Romance Writer of the Year at the Nigerian Writers Awards.
Read some of Kiru Taye’s fabulous fan fiction erotica, exclusive to Brittle Paper, here and here.
Sunday, June 21, 4pm GMT
Abubakar Adam Ibrahim
Abubakar Adam Ibrahim is the author of the short story collection The Whispering Trees, which was longlisted for the inaugural Etisalat Prize for Literature in 2014. The title story was also shortlisted for the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing in 2013.
Ibrahim has won the BBC African Performance Prize and the ANA Plateau/Amatu Braide Prize for Prose and in 2014, he was selected for the Africa39 list of writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define future trends in African literature. His first novel, Season of Crimson Blossoms, won the Nigerian Prize for Literature, Africa’s largest literary prize, in 2016.
Ibrahim is the Features Editor at the Daily Trust newspaper. Ibrahim’s reporting from North-East Nigeria has won particular critical acclaim. He was the 2018 winner of the Michael Elliot Award for Excellence in African Storytelling for his report, “All That Was Familiar,” published in Granta in May 2017. His second collection of short stories, Dreams and Assorted Nightmares, is forthcoming with Masobe books in July 2020.
Sunday, June 28, 4pm GMT
Ayesha Harruna Attah
Ayesha Harruna Attah is the author of four novels: Harmattan Rain (Per Ankh Publishers), nominated for the 2010 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize; Saturday’s Shadows (World Editions), shortlisted for the Kwani? Manuscript project in 2013; The Hundred Wells of Salaga (Cassava Republic Press, UK; Other Press, US); and a forthcoming young adult novel, The Deep Blue Between (Pushkin Children’s).
Educated at Mount Holyoke College, Columbia University, and NYU, Ayesha has degrees in Biochemistry, Journalism, and Creative Writing. A 2015 Africa Centre Artists in Residency Award Laureate and Sacatar Fellow, Attah is the recipient of the 2016 Miles Morland Foundation Scholarship for non-fiction.
Attah currently lives in Senegal and loves cooking, green tea ice cream, and staring at the ocean.
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