University of Michigan-Flint

Ernest N. Emenyonu, Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters (FNAL) and Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Education (FNAE), is Professor of Africana Studies, University of Michigan-Flint. A specialist in African Literature, he has taught African Literature at various institutions of higher learning in Nigeria and the United States, and has published extensively in the field. His publications include articles in leading journals of African Literature and chapters in books and anthologies on the criticism of African Literature in Africa, Europe, India and the United States. He has edited several works of criticism on African Literature including  Emerging Perspectives on Nawal El Saadawi (2010), Emerging Perspectives on Chinua Achebe Vols. 1 & 2, (2004), Goat Skin Bags and Wisdom: New Critical Perspectives on African Literature (2000). He is also the author of:  A Good Shepherd: A Biography of the Most Rev. Benjamin C. Nwankiti (2003). His works of fiction include: Tales of Our Motherland (short stories) (1999) and a number of children’s books including Uzo: A Story of African Childhood (2011).

Dr. Patricia T. Emenyonu, formerly Associate Professor of English/English Education, at  Imo State University/ University of Calabar, Nigeria, teaches in the Departments of English and Africana Studies at the University of Michigan-Flint. Her research interests include 'Women as writers in Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean.' A specialist in African Literature, Reading and English Methodology, she has published variously in these fields in leading journals and anthologies in Africa and the United States. She is the author of Reading and the Nigerian Cultural Background. 

Bryce, Jane

Jane Bryce is Professor of African Literature and Cinema at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill. Born in Tanzania, she was educated there, the UK, and Nigeria. She has been a freelance journalist and fiction editor and has published in a range of academic journals and essay collections. She is also a creative writer and teacher, curates a film festival and edits Poui: Cave Hill Journal of Creative Writing.

Eke, Maureen 

Maureen N. Eke has a PH.D in Comparative Literature from Indiana University, Bloomington. She is currently a Professor of English at Central Michigan University, where she teaches courses in African Diasporan literatures, postcolonial literatures/theory, as well as women’s writing.  She has also served as the Associate Vice President for Diversity and International Education at Central Michigan University.  She is a Past President of the African Literature Association (ALA) and current editor of the ALA’s Series.  Her publications include four co-edited volumes: Cross-Rhythms; African Images: Recent Studies and Texts in Cinema (2000); Gender and Sexuality in African Literature and Film (2007); and Emerging Perspectives on Nawal El Saadawi (2010); and Literature, the Visual Arts and globalization in Africa and its Diaspora (2011).  She has published numerous articles on African Literature and cinema. Some of her articles have appeared in Research in African Literatures, Callaloo, Visual Anthropology, and South African Theatre Journal.  She serves on the editorial boards of several international publications, including Critical Arts; Journal of African Cinema; and Africa Literature Today.  She is currently co-editing a special volume of Research in African Literatures (RAL) on “Memory/History, Violence, and Reconciliation.”

Newell, Stephanie

Professor Stephanie Newell teaches postcolonial literature at the University of Sussex, UK. She has published widely on African popular literatures and West African literary history, including Ghanaian Popular Fiction (James Currey, 2000) and Literary Culture in Colonial Ghana (Manchester UP, 2002). Her recent books include West African Literatures: Ways of Reading (Oxford UP, 2006), and The Forger’s Tale: The Search for Odeziaku (Ohio UP, 2006). She is currently writing a book on anonymity in colonial West African print cultures, to be published in 2012 by Ohio University Press.

Nnolim, Charles

Charles Nnolim is Professor of English, University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria. His specialty is African literature, especially the novel. He has published extensively on the criticism of African Literature in books, anthologies and leading journals throughout the world. He is a Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters (FNAL), Fellow of the International Biographical Association (FIBA) and Fellow of the World Literary Academy (FWLA). In 2006 he was the recepient of Nigeria’s highest award in the field of Letters, the Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM).

Nwankwo, Chimalum

Chimalum Nwankwo is a Professor of Literature in the Department of English at North Carolina A & T State University, Greensboro. An award winning poet (uniquely known as ‘poet of the aerial zone), he has published several collections of poetry including: Feet of the limping Dancers (1987), Toward the Aerial Zone (1988), Voices from the Deep Water (1997), The Womb in the Heart (2002),  The  Womb in the Heart and Other Poems (2010), and Of the Deepest Shadows and the Prisons of Fire (2010). He has also published a critical study, Toward the Kingdom of Woman and Man: The Works of Ngugi wa Thion’go (1992), and a play, The Trumpet Parable (1988). In 1988 and 2002, Professor Nwankwo won the Association of Nigerian Authors Poetry prize, and in the year 2001, he was awarded the senior Fulbright Fellowship for scholarly research and teaching in Nigeria. He spent 2011-2012 academic year on sabbatical at the Nnamdi Azikiwe University in Awka, Anambra State, Nigeria. He is currently Professorof English and World Literatures and Writer-in-Residence, Nigerian Turkish Nile University, Abuja, Nigeria.

Quayson, Ato

Ato Quayson is inaugural director of the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies and Professor in the Department of English at the University of Toronto.  His publications include: Strategic Transformations in Nigerian Writing (1997), Postcolonialism: Theory,Practice or Process? (2000), Calibrations: Reading for the Social (2003) and Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability and the Crisis of Representation (2007).  He is also editor of African Literary Theory and Criticism (with Tejumola Olaniyan, 2007) and the 2-volume Cambridge History of Postcolonial Literature (2012).

Tekpetey, Kwawisi

Kwawisi Tekpetey received his Ph.D. in African Languages and Literature from University of Wisconsin, Madison.  He is currently Professor of International Languages and Literatures, at Central State University, Wilberforce, Ohio, where he served as Director of the Honors Program. He teaches courses in African literature, French, and Swahili. His research interests are mainly in Francophone African Literature and African Verbal Art Forms.  An Associate Editor of International Journal of African Studies, he has published in Research in African Literatures, Obsidian, and African Literature Today as well as in other peer-reviewed journals.

Uko, Iniobong

Iniobong I. Uko, Ph.D is a Professor of English in the Department of English, and the current Director of General Studies, University of Uyo, Uyo, Nigeria. Her area of research is African Literature, specifically women’s writing, and a cross-cultural study of African and Diasporic women’s writings. She is concerned about the diverse issues that confront black women daily in all spheres of life in different cultures. Professor Uko has participated in several women’s activities and initiatives in Nigeria and abroad. She has published extensively in learned journals and books in Nigeria, Ghana, Germany, the United States of America and the United Kingdom. She is the author of the seminal book Gender and Identity in the Works of Osonye Tess Onwueme.

In 2007, James Gibbs retired from a career as a teacher that had taken him
to universities in Ghana, Malawi, Nigeria, Belgium and the UK.  Since then
he has continued his university contacts as an external examiner for the
University of Ghana, and pursued his interests in African literature and
drama. He edited  African Theatre: Companies (2010) and the Festivals issue
of the same series  (forthcoming). His collection of essays on the Ghanaian
theatre, Nkyin-Kyin, appeared in 2009 and his account of the first
production of Kobina Sekyi's The Blinkards was included in African Theatre:
Histories (2010). His most recent reviews have appeared in the LUCAS
Bulletin, and an essay on  "Soyinka's You Must Set Forth" is included in
Engaging with Literature of Commitment (Rodopi, 2012).  A conference on
Harold Pinter at Goldsmiths, University of London, during November 2011
provided him with an opportunity to stage a rehearsed reading of his
verbatim theatre piece about  Pinter's first play (The Room).

Ismaeel Dhul-Qarnayn