arts@MIT Press Release 8/8/2006: Nigerian writer/activist Chris Abani to visit MIT

"Abani's poems are the most naked, harrowing expression of prison life and political torture imaginable. Reading them is like being singed with a red hot iron."
--Playwright Harold Pinter on Abani's "Kalakuta Republic"

"Abani's intensely visual style--and his sense of humor--convert the stuff of hopelessness into the stuff of hope."
--San Francisco Chronicle on Abani's "GraceLand"

Cambridge, MA...Nigerian novelist, poet and activist Chris Abani, artist-in-residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from September 18-22, will read from his poetry and fiction and jam on his saxophone on Monday, September 18 at 7pm in the Lewis Music Library (Room 14E-109, 160 Memorial Dr.) The event is free and open to the public; no tickets or reservations are necessary.

Called a "fiction writer of mature and bounteous gifts" by Sam Lipsyte for the New York Times, Abani's own life story sounds like a harrowing political thriller. He was imprisoned at the age of 18 by the Nigerian regime on grounds that his first novel, written when he was 16, had been a blueprint for the failed coup of General Vatsa.

"When I wrote the book, I wasn't political. I was a kid, ...But when I went to prison, I became aware," Abani said in an interview with the Press-Enterprise in Riverside, CA.

During college, Abani's activities as a member of a guerrilla theater group that performed plays in front of government offices resulted in another year's imprisonment in the Kiri Kiri maximum security prison. Abani wrote the play "Song of a Broken Flute" for his university's convocation ceremony (1990), which got him another 18 months in prison, under threat of death. There he wrote "Kalakuta Republic," a collection of poetry that pays tribute to those who suffered and died in prison.

When released in 1991, Abani chose exile, settling first in the United Kingdom, then California. He teaches creative writing at the University of California, Riverside and in the MFA Program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. His presentations and seminars fuse world politics with art, addressing human rights, democracy, and tyranny.

An accomplished saxophone player, he often concludes his presentations with a musical piece tied in with what he has discussed.

Abani is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Riverside and the recipient of the PEN USA Freedom-to-Write Award, the Prince Claus Award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a California Book Award, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award & the PEN Hemingway Book Prize.

Abani's residency is sponsored through the MIT Office of the Arts and the Alan W. Katzenstein Memorial Fund, established in 1998 in memory of Alan Katzenstein (MIT Class of 1942), a long-time supporter of the arts at MIT.