Notes
1 The second annual African Studies Lecture given at the University of Leeds on the 24 April 1996 by Femi Osofisan. The title of the lecture was: ‘Warriors of a Failed Utopia?’ (published in Leeds African Studies Bulletin 61:11–36 https://bit.ly/2Uo1SoX).
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Notes on contributors
Femi Osofisan
Restless artist and multiple award winner, Nigeria's Femi Osofisan (aka Okinba Launko) wears many caps - as activist playwright, scholar, poet, novelist, journalist, actor, director, songwriter. He has published five novellas, six volumes of poetry, and dozens of plays (including The Chattering and the Song; Esu and the Vagabond Minstrels; Morountodun; etc.), plus a number of ‘re-readings’ from the Greek classics (such as Tegonni, an African Antigone and Women of Owu). He is also the author of the acclaimed biography of the celebrated poet John Pepper Clark, entitled J.P. Clark: A Voyage, and of three books of essays.
For his work, Osofisan has received several fellowships from various international bodies, including the British Council, the International Writers Programme at Iowa, the Henri Clews Foundation in Napoule, France, and is currently a member of the Advisory Board of the International Research Center at the Freie Universität in Berlin.
Osofisan has also been a guest professor at several institutions, including at universities in Accra, Yaoundé, Leeds, Edinburgh, Bayreuth, Athens, Colombo, Toronto, Iowa, Evanston, Bloomington, New York City, Beijing, and so on.
He is the recipient of numerous awards, among which are the French National Order of Merit, the University of Ibadan Faculty of Arts Distinguished Alumnus Award, the Nigerian National Order of Merit Award (which is the highest award for Nigerian academics), and the prestigious Fonlon-Nichols Prize. He is also a Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters, as well as the first African winner of the Thalia Prize.