Nigerian Wins Commonwealth Prize for Books.

A Nigerian academic, Sule Emmanuel Egya, who writes poetry and fiction under the preferred style name E. E. Sule, has won this year’s Commonwealth Prize for Book Africa region.

His first novel, Sterile Sky, published by Pearson Education in the African Writers Series in 2012, was adjudged best by the Commonwealth Prize panel. It was announced on Wednesday.
Dr. Egya was a member of the Editorial Board of Leadership Newspapers Group.

Born on 20 October 1976, Egya is a native of Usha village, Nasarawa local government area, Nasarawa State. He attended Gwale Primary School, Kano, and Tony Cheta College, Kano, for his primary and secondary education. He proceeded to University of Jos where he obtained Bachelor of Arts degree in English. He attended Benue State University for his MA Literature and University of Abuja for his PhD Literature. He has taught at Nasarawa State University and University of Abuja, and is currently an associate professor of English at Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University, Lapai.

From 2006 to 2007, he was a resident writer at the Per Sesh Writing Fellowship in Senegal, run by the world class Ghanaian writer Ayi Kwei Armah. From 2009 to 2011 he was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow and resident scholar at the Institute of Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin. He was a visiting scholar at the Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham in 2011. From 2011 to 2012, he was an African Humanities Program Fellow. His research interests include the intersection of literature and politics in Africa, feminism, cultural studies, and ecocriticism.

His numerous articles have appeared in internationally respected journals such as Research in African Literatures, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Matatu, English in Africa, and Wasafiri. He is the author of the scholarly works Poetics of Rage: a Reading of Remi Raji's Poetry, The Writings of Zaynab Alkali, In Their Voices and Visions: Conversations with New Nigerian Writers, and Nation, Power, and Dissidence in the Third-Generation of Nigerian Poetry in English (forthcoming, UNISA Press).

Besides poems and short stories published in numerous anthologies, literary magazines and journals, he has published three poetry volumes namely What the Sea Told Me (winner of the 2009 ANA Gabriel Okara Prize), Naked Sun, and Knifing Tongues.

The Blurb of Sterile Sky is a story of a gifted young Murtala who grew in Kano where violent riots escalate with his family’s own woes threaten to erase all he holds dear. Stalked by monsters real and imagined, desperate to preserve a sense of self and the future, Murtala hunts for answers in the wreckage of the city and gives us a unique insight into modern life in northern Nigeria. Mould-breaking in its tackling of religious conflict, this extraordinary first novel offers a powerful portrait of an African community in shock and transition.

Source : #ThisDay