The Day “Sharp Mouth” Came To Town - By Mike Ekunno
The June edition of Abuja Writers Forum’s (AWF) Guest Writer’s Session that held on 26th June was like no other before it. It lived up to its billings on every parameter. On hand to read was Ms. Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani whose deafening buzz after winning the Commonwealth Prize with her debut novel has gone international now. Ever since she was announced as the 2010 Commonwealth Writers Prize winner for Best First Book (Africa), her profile has continued to point skywards.
The audience was fully seated by the time Nwaubani daintily stepped up to AWF’s ‘Hot Seat’ in her short, flowery red dress and white wedges wearing her trademark bronze-coloured attachment, at the Pen and Pages Bookshop venue.

Shortly before she did, Sola Odulusi, a studio fine artist had showcased paintings and artworks, one of the regular side attractions to the day’s main event. Before the Guest Writer took the Hot Seat, the compere for the event, Oluchi Agbanyim, had brought on El Nathan John who read a short citation to introduce the guest writer. Nwaubani was well composed as she read from her novel. The reading almost turned interactive with the audience joining with "oohs!" and "aahs!" following the cadences of the engaging tale.

Nwaubani’s novel, l Do Not Come To You By Chance, is about financial scam, a.k.a 419, which has earned Nigeria some notoriety – some would say popularity – internationally. A jobless graduate full of a young man’s idealism is forced by family adversity to go begging for assistance from his 419 kingpin uncle, Cash Daddy. That presents the con don apt opportunity to arm-twist and try recruiting his young relation into the loathsome "business".

The book had been presented in diverse media as a refreshingly different, humorous departure from the dour literary field. There were testimonies of having read the book all through the night, or over a couple of sittings among Nwaubani’s audience. Some described the book as unputdownable.

Reading over, it was timefor questions and comments from the audience among whom were the author’s mother and guests from as far afield as Makurdi and Awka. Members of the diplomatic corps were also in attendance among whom were Mrs Eva Bertha and her husband from the Spanish Embassy; Mr Peter Claussen of the US Embassy as well as ace TV personality, Eugenia Abu and Bibi Bakare-Yusuf of CassavaRepublic. Comments and questions from the audience came in volleys. The author was asked who her favourite author was and how long it took to write the novel. Others wanted to know about her experience with Writer’s Block, how she pulled off the coup for a foreign publisher and whether she experienced the 419 subject of her book. President and founder of AWF, Dr. Emman Shehu, wanted to know if her book borrowed anything from Psychology, her discipline, and the connection with the Snowflakes writing style.

Nwaubani took on each question shooting from the hips. P.G. Woodhouse is her favourite author for his witty writing and I Do Not Come To You By Chance was written between January and February 2007. She pleasantly shocked the audience by revealing that she does not experience Writer’s Block and dismissed it as a Western concept. And of her award-winning book, she said when her mother read it, she commented that she read glimpser "of my sharp mouth" – a comment that made someone in the audience remark that Nwaubani’s mother must have read her natural ‘voice’ in the book. She got published abroad through a literary agent she got on-line, and the scam art which was flourishing all over the eastern part of the country provided her with the laboratory for her work. On symbiosis with Psychology, she agreed there would have been lots of injections from social psychology which enables you observe the transformation of the personality of the individual. Then she revealed how she came about Snowflakes by using the Google search engine. She also gave kudos to her Nigerian and overseas publishers for the depth of editing work they did on her raw manuscript. Her Nigerian publishers were in the hall with a cache of the book which sold like hot cake.

The highly satisfying evening’s literary menu dovetailed into a culinary one as Dr. Emman Shehu announced it was the second anniversary of the precocious literary body. The anniversary cake was cut with wining and dining. There were comments on how well organized the event was. Comments by the Guest Writer on the successful reading and book signing showed that the event was the outcome of long time planning, a reflection of the fact that she did not come to Abuja Writers Forum by chance. And then that revelation that she used to be scolded by her mother for having a “sharp mouth”.

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Helon Habila Measures Words In Abuja - By Abdullahi Abubakar
The popular Guest Writer Session, a literary intervention by the Abuja Writers Forum, will feature on July 31, prize-winning author and poet Helon Habila. Born in Kaltungo, Gombe State, but currently teaching Creative Writing at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, Habila shot into international prominence in 2001 when he won the Caine Prize with his Waiting For An Angel, a novel of interconnected stories. In 2002 he moved to England to become the African Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia. After his fellowship he enrolled for a PhD in Creative Writing. His writing has won many prizes including the Commonwealth Writers Prize, 2003. In 2005-2006 he was the first Chinua Achebe Fellow at Bard College in New York.

He is a contributing editor to the Virginia Quarterly Review, and in 2006 he co-edited the British Council's anthology, New Writing 14. His second novel, Measuring Time, was published in February, 2007.

Currently in Nigeria with co-resource persons Madeleine Thiene (Canada) and Tsi Tsi Dangaremba (Zimbabwe) for the International Creative Writing Workshop sponsored by Fidelity Bank, Habila’s third novel Oil On Water is due out soon. While Waiting For An Angel has been translated into several languages, Measuring Time has recently been translated into French.

Regarded as “ a powerful and moving voice” in Nigerian literature, Habila’s novels apart from winning prizes, have attracted critical acclaim. Mary Whipple, who regards Waiting For An Angel as stunning underscores her assessment thus: “Habila makes us think, ponder the fragility of democratic institutions which we take for granted, and explore how the slow erosion of rights can lead to the rise of dictators who seize absolute power to continue their rule. Though the drama and violence are presented with almost journalistic clarity, the novel’s emotion is engendered by our identification with the characters and our ability to understand that these are people not much different from ourselves, people who through no fault of their own have become victims of circumstance and the power of a military controlled by one man.

“Habila’s novel is a powerful defense of the freedom of the press and a celebration of the lives of those courageous writers who have refused to be silenced, even when faced with death. As he says, ‘Every oppressor knows that wherever one word is joined to another word to form a sentence, there’ll be revolt. That is our work, the media: to refuse to be silenced, to encourage legitimate criticism wherever we find it.’ This moving study of idealistic young people refusing to give up, even when faced with threats to their very lives, is an unforgettable story of the human spirit waiting for an angel–and sometimes meeting the Angel of Death.”

A reviewer of Measuring Time states that: “There is that ‘storytelling’ element about the novel as in oral tradition; we get several stories, in fact, with some colorful characters hovering about: a ‘witch,’ a drunken cousin, the deeply Christian Aunt Marina, two elderly sisters of the deceased Reverend, among others.... Habila gives us a sensitive and realistic account of the tradition and lives of the Nigerian people, and inadvertently pushes us to reflect on our own parallel lives at that time.”

The Guest Writer Session holds by 4pm at Pen and Pages Bookstores, Adetokunbo Ademola Street , (near Mikano Generators), Wuse II, Abuja, and is a regular feature for members of the public and the diplomatic community. It will be preceded by the monthly creative writing workshop which started a year ago and is currently focusing on poetry.

Tanure Ojaide had kick-started the poetry series in May with an exhaustive overview, while Toyin Adewale-Gabriel took the June edition, focusing on imagery. The July edition will be handled by Helon Habila, who apart from being a novelist, is also a poet. He will teach about concrete words and figurative language. The workshop starts by 11:30am at the International Institute of Journalism (IIJ), Hamdala Plaza, Plot 23, Jimmy Carter Street, off Protea Hotel, Asokoro

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