Adesanmi awarded inaugural Penguin Prize

Pius Adesanmi, professor of English, has won the inaugural Penguin Prize for African Writing in the non-fiction category. The award seeks to highlight diverse writing talent on the African continent and make new African fiction and non-fiction available to a wider readership. The authors receive C$7,300 and are published by Penguin South Africa.

Nominated as one of seven non-fiction African writers, Adesanmi unravels what Africa means to him in a groundbreaking collection of essays entitled You’re Not a Country, Africa.

Crisscrossing the continent, Adesanmi engages the enigma that is Africa in the 21^st century amid  pan-Africanism, Negritude, nationalism, decolonization and projects through which Africans seek to restore their humanity.

Hailing from Isanlu, Nigeria, Adesanmi holds a degree in French from the University of Ilorin (1992), a master’s degree in French from the University of Ibadan (1997) and a PhD in French from the University of British Columbia (2001).

He has lived in France, South Africa, and the United States, where he was an assistant professor of comparative literature at Pennsylvania State University before his current appointment at Carleton. He came to national attention with his weekly column for Sahara Reporters and has been one of Nigeria’s most consistent public intellectuals in recent times. He also writes a Sunday column for NEXT newspaper.

“There is no telling of the story of this prize without Carleton University,’’ says Adesanmi. “When I decided to return to Canada after teaching in the U.S. for four years, everyone expected me to choose McMaster’s offer over Carleton’s. My senior colleagues felt I needed my head examined.

“They didn’t know what I knew – the inspiring working environment of the English Department; Dean John Osborne’s great vision for the development of African Studies; the wonderful African studies colleagues across most disciplines in the arts and humanities, especially African socio-cultural anthropologist Blair Rutherford; above all, they didn’t know about Carleton’s best kept secret – the library!”

“The McOdrum Library houses one of the most fantastic African Studies collections in North America. The Carleton library is an Africanist’s Disneyland. Put this picture together and you will understand why Carleton University is not just a place of work for me. It has been the home that has fired my imagination in the last four years and enabled the manuscript that won the Penguin Prize.”