A new award for literature is being started in Nigeria by Dilibe Onyeama. It’s called the Niger Award for Literary Merit.
Some of these foreign awards are political. As long as we keep relying on foreign assistance to promote Nigerian literature, we are in trouble. We have to stop all that. It is necessary that we create the principle of self-help. An indigenous awards foundation that will motivate and inspire Nigerian writers. It’s high time we started looking inwards. We have to promote our writers by creating our own indigenous awards.
Read the interview with Onyeama here.
Who is Laila Lalami
Laila Lalami is the award winning and best selling author of six books.
What books has Laila Lalami written?
Laila has written the novels, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, Secret Son, The Moor's Account, The Other Americans, and The Dream Hotel.
What awards has Laila Lalami won?
Laila Lalami has won the American Book Award, the Arab American Book Award, the Hurston-Write Legacy Award, a Guggenheim a Harvard Radcliffe Fellowship, and a British Council Fellowship. Her work has also been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Booker Prize, the Women's Prize, and the Edgar Allan Poe Award.