Tutors: Writers' Studio Workshop #2

Ready to transform your writing? We have an interesting line-up of tutors to help you. Read more about them below and register for the next edition of the Writers' Studio Workshop in Lagos. 

To book a place, please call : 08034766250, 08166906999,08079774009

Elements of a Story with Toni Kan

Toni Kan is an award winning poet, essayist and short story writer. He is one of Nigeria's most anthologised poet and short story writer. Author of the critically acclaimed poetry collection When a Dream Lingers Too Long and the novella Ballad of Rage, and the popular collection of short stories, Nights of a Creaking Bed, published by Cassava Republic, Nigeria. His works have appeared in Salthill, Drum Voices, Revue, Farafina, Sentinel Poetry Quarterly and ANA Review. He studied English Literature at the University of Jos and has an MA degree in English Literature from the University of Lagos, graduating at the top of his class.

Work in Progress: Turn a Good Story into a Great Story with Ayodele Morocco-Clarke

Born in Lagos, Nigeria and descendant of kin from the West Indies, Sierra Leone and the Republic of Benin, Ayodele Morocco-Clarke is a writer of mixed heritage and an award winning solicitor and advocate of the Supreme Court of Nigeria. She lectured Environmental Law as a Senior Lecturer at the Lagos State University and is an Oil & Gas, Nuclear Energy and Environmental Law Consultant, whilst also being a partner at Matrix Solicitors in Lagos. Describing herself as stubbornly unconventional, Ayodele is the Editor-in-Chief of Critical Literature Review and her works have appeared in To See the Mountain (the 2011 Caine Prize anthology), Crossing the Lines (a 2011 anthology edited by Jackie Kay and Kachi A. Ozumba), African Roar 2010 and 2011, Author Africa 2009, African Writing, the New Black Magazine, Saraba Magazine and Sphere Literary Magazine, amongst others.

Manuscript Preparation, Submission and Publication with Azafi Omoluabi-Ogosi

Azafi Omoluabi-Ogosi has lived with books all her life and has loved them since she could read the alphabet. She has worked as an editor/writer for Goge Africa, and freelanced with Soundcity Blast and My Media Magazine before joining Farafina Magazine. She owes most of her publishing experience to the stint at Farafina, which exposed her to the entire publishing process.

Azafi attended the University of Lagos, where she studied Mass Communication and then Political Science specializing in International Relations for her MSc.

She is the managing editor of Parrésia Publisher, her dream to change the face of African publishing. A go-getter, she believes a business model can be built that will sell books in record numbers. She also strongly believes that Africans read, however, books need to be helped along the way to the waiting hands of each reader.She lives in Lagos, Nigeria with her husband, three children and her imaginary dog Rov.

An Evening With Short Story Writer, Igoni Barrett

Igoni Barrett was a winner of the BBC World Service short story competition for 2005. His first book, a collection of short stories entitled From Caves of Rotten Teeth, was first published in 2005 and reissued in 2008.

In 2006, he co-founded the online literary journal Blackbiro. In 2007 he joined the editorial team of Farafina Magazine, where he was managing editor until 2009. In May 2009, he initiated and managed "9 Writers, 4 Cities: The Book Tour", a six-week reading tour by several prominent Nigerian writers (including his father Lindsay Barrett).Invited as a participant to various literary festivals, Igoni Barrett was a  guest writer at the Garden City Literary Festival in September 2009. He was the founding organizer of the BookJam reading series in Lagos, Nigeria, which featured the writers Jude Dibia, Michela Wrong, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Binyavanga Wainaina, Helon Habila and Tsitsi Dangarembga, among others.

In 2010, Barrett was awarded a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship. In July 2011, he travelled to Provincetown, Massachusetts, for a month-long Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and in September 2011 participated in a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center in Italy.Barrett's short fiction has been published in many print and online magazines, including AGNI, Guernica and Kwani?. His work also has appeared in the anthologies Incommunicado: Tales from across the Empire (2006) and The New Gong Book of New Nigerian Short Stories (2008).His new collection of stories, Love Is Power, Or Something Like That, was recently published in the UK, US and Nigeria.