Allegheny College - Communication Arts and Theatre Department

Guest Speakers

	Chris Abani
	As part of an interdisciplinary course on globalization and postcolonialism taught by Dr. Ishita Sinha Roy (Communication Arts) and Dr. Soledad Caballero (English Literature), distinguished international writer and poet, Chris Abani, visited the Allegheny Campus as part of the ?Diversity Scholar in Residence? initiative. Chris Abani is from Nigeria and wrote his first novel at the age of 16. Two years later (1985) he was imprisoned on the grounds that this work had served as a blueprint for the failed coup of General Vatsa. In 1987, while at university, his activities as a member of a guerrilla theatre group which performed plays in front of government officers resulted in a further year?s imprisonment in the Kiri Kiri maximum security prison. A play, Song of a Broken Flute, which he wrote in 1990 for the convocation ceremony of his university, led to a third period of incarceration, under threat of death, for a further eighteen months. Many of his prison companions did not survive. Chris Abani?s novels are Masters of the Board (Delta, 1985) and GraceLand (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004). His poetry collections are Kalakuta Republic (Saqi, 2000), Daphne?s Lot (Red Hen, 2003) and Dog Woman (Red Hen, Fall 2004). Chris Abani teaches in the MFA Program at Antioch University, Los Angeles and is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of California, Riverside. A Middleton Fellow at the University of Southern California, he is the recipient of the 2001 PEN USA Freedom-to-Write Award, the 2001 Prince Claus Award, the 2002 Imbonge Yetziwe Poetry International Award (South Africa), and a 2003 Lannan Literary Fellowship.

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Guest Speakers