'Slow down and consider things'
“Theprivilege of being a writer is that you have this opportunity to slow down andto consider things.”—Chris Abani
Born in Nigeria on this date in1966, Abani is the award-winning author of half-dozen novels; numerous novellas,short stories and plays; and 8 books of poetry. He started writing young and was so good at skewering those in powerthat he was imprisoned 3 times by the Nigerian government. The first time came after his first novel– Masters of the Board – came out at age19, when he was accused of attempting to overthrow the government.
His second novel, Sirocco, published shortly after hisrelease, got him right back in jail where he continued writing and afterrelease the second time he produced a number of anti-government plays that wereconsidered so inflammatory they got him back in prison, this time sentenced todeath. But he escaped to England wherehe continued his education and writing after being awarded a PEN/BarbaraGoldsmith Freedom to Write Award, the literary world’s response to thoseinjustices.
Since emigrating to the U.S. andeventually earning dual citizenship, he has won some three dozen major awardsincluding a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fiction, the Hemingway Foundation/PENAward, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, and a California Book Award. His 2015 novel, The Secret History of Las Vegas, won the Edgar Allen Poe Award forBest Paperback Original.
An avid supporter of the World WideWeb as a writing and publishing resource, he noted, “Like most writers, I findthe Web is a wonderful distraction. Whodoesn't need that last minute research before writing?”
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