ALA Lecture Series – Dec 4, 2021

Authors Speak: African Migrations

Sylvie Kandé

Author of La quête infinie de l’autre rive: épopée en trois chants (2011)

Benjamin Kwakye

Author of Obsessions of Paradise, 2021 ALA Book of the Year Award for Creative Writing

Saturday, December 4, 2021 at 11:00 AM EST; London, 4:00 PM; Lagos, 5:00 PM; Johannesburg, 6:00 PM; Nairobi, 7:00 PM

***Live on the ALA YouTube Channel***

Sylvie Kandé is a Franco-Senegalese historian specializing in the complex conversations between Africa and Europe, Africa and its Diasporas. She is the author of Terres, urbanisme et architecture 'créoles' en Sierra Leone, 18ème-19ème siècles (L'Harmattan, 1998), the editor of Discours sur le métissage, identités métisses: En quête d'Ariel (L'Harmattan, 1999), and the author of three collections of poetry published by Gallimard, including La quête infinie de l’autre rive: épopée en trois chants. An English translation, by Alexander Dickow, of The Neverending Quest for the Other Shore is forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press in 2022.

Benjamin Kwakye, born in Accra, Ghana, holds degrees from Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School. His latest novel, Obsessions of Paradise, is the 2021 winner of the African Literature Association’s Book of the Year Award for Creative Writing, the regional Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book, the regional Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book, and the IPPY Gold Award for Adult Multicultural Fiction. He is a director of The Africa Education Initiative.

For more information:

Professor Akinwumi Adesokan at adesokan@indiana.edu
Professor Mohamed Kamara at KamaraM@wlu.edu
Professor Matthew H. Brown at web@africanlit.org