Poetry and Fiction from Africa

Readings from Olive Olusegun and Nnamdi Oguike
Olive Olusegun and Victor Adewale
Image credit: Olive Olusegun (left) and Victor Adewale (right)

  • The Levinsky Room, 3rd Floor, Roland Levinsky Building

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Join us for an evening of poetry and fiction by two new celebrated voices from Africa. Co-produced by Poetry Africa, Literature Works and the University of Plymouth. 
Olive Olusegun is the visiting international writer-in-residence for Quay Words at Exeter Custom House in March 2024, in partnership with Poetry Africa. Poetry Africa is based at the Centre for Creative Arts at the University of Kwazulu-Natal, it is the largest spoken word poetry festival on the African continent and is now in its 27th year. This event is programmed in partnership with Literature Works. Olive is a Nigerian, Kenyan-born South African resident. She is a multi-disciplinary artist who uses poetry, performance, art, and architecture in various mediums to story-tell and “story-reveal”. Olive’s awards include winning “Sign and Slam” where she performed one of her poems in South African Sign Language and placing 2nd in the 2023 Slam Jam finals of the Poetry Africa Festival. Oscillating between intrapersonal experiences, embodying the stories of fellow women, and targeting larger socio-political issues through intimate narratives, Olive’s hope is to increase empathy, and awareness and reveal stories that are often hidden or easily discarded.
Nnamdi Oguike is a Nigerian writer and recipient of a Miles Morland Foundation Writing Scholarship in 2019. His debut collection of short stories, Do Not Say It’s Not Your Country (Griots Lounge, 2019), was on the lists of Brittle Paper’s Most Notable Books of 2019 and Top 15 Debut Books of 2019. It has been translated into Italian and was a finalist at the Premio Internazionale di Letteratura Città di Como in October 2023. More of Oguike’s writing can be found in The Threepenny Review, The Dalhousie Review, The Weganda Review, African Writer, Brittle Paper, A Fire Within and Other Stories: Storymoja Best African Series (2022) and The Wrong Patient and Other Stories: Africa Book Club Anthology (2018). He is currently a recipient of a doctoral studentship at the University of Plymouth, studying creative writing.
Date: Thursday 21 March 2024
Time: 19:00–20:30
Venue: The Levinsky Room, 3rd Floor, Roland Levinsky Building
Ticket information: Free (booking required)
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