Obari gomba biography sample
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Obari Gomba
Obari Gomba (PhD) teaches Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Port Harcourt in Nigeria, and is an Honorary Fellow in Writing of the University of Iowa (USA). He fryst vatten a recipient of Rivers ANA Distinguished Writer Award, Halogen Award for Poetry, and Kangaroo Poetry Festival Poet of 2018. He is a two-time winner of both the Best Literary Artiste Award and the First Prize for Drama of the English Association of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. His works include Guerrilla Post (Winner of ANA Drama Prize 2018/ Shortlisted for the Nigeria Prize for Literature 2018), For Every Homeland (Winner of ANA Poetry Prize 2017/ Shortlisted for the Nigeria Prize for Literature 2017), Thunder Protocol (Winner of ANA Poetry Prize 2016), Length of Eyes (Shortlisted for ANA Poetry Prize in 2013 /Shortlisted for the Nigeria Prize for Literature 2013), and Pearls of the Mangrove (adopted as a ‘Book of the Festival’ for the 2011 Garden City Literary Festival and the
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n October 2023, the richest literary prize in Africa, the Nigerian Prize for Literature, was awarded to a Nigerian university lecturer and playwright, Obari Gomba for his short play titled, Grit. Gomba, who had been previously shortlisted for the prize in the poetry category, was selected over two other shortlisted plays. The Nigeria Prize for Literature is worth a whopping $100,000.
Understanding the Nigeria Prize for Literature
Until 2004, the reward system for creative writing in Nigeria was poorly conducted and rewarded in paltry sums. But everything changed when the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas company registered a charity for the purpose of rewarding outstanding creative writing projects with an impressive assessment team. So far, there have been 12 winning published creative writing works across all genres. The prize was instituted to encourage creativity to support dreams for another Nobel Prize-winning work from Nigeria since Wole Soyinka.
While literary pr
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Obari Gomba
Nigerian writer and academic
Obari Gomba is a Nigerian writer and academic. In 2023, he won the Nigeria Prize for Literature for his work Grit.[1][2]
Career
[edit]Gomba is an associate dean of Humanities and teaches Literary and Creative Writing at the University of Port Harcourt.[1] He won the ANA Poetry Prize in 2017 and 2018 was a Honorary Fellow in Writing at the University of Iowa.[2]
Gomba's work had been shortlisted five times since 2013 for the Nigeria Prize for Literature prior to winning it in 2023 for his play Grit,[1] which Lindsay Barrett described as "a cautionary tale in which the reader or the onlooker is being alerted to the resilience and determined existence of GRIT as a quality of life. ... a wholesome commentary on Nigeria's contemporary political circumstance."[3]