Event: Book N Gauge 17

Book N Gauge has been a celebration of words, with seventeen editions now. This Saturday, 24th November, 2012, the event will feature some fine Nigerian writers. More details below and on the poster.

The Event

Book N Gauge, the monthly literary event hosted by Pulpfaction Book Club will host three authors on Saturday 24th November 2012.  The seventeenth edition, will feature Betty Abah, Journalist, poet and author of the poetry collection, Go and Tell Our King; Andrew Oki, author of the recently published Bonfires of the gods and Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, author of The Whispering Trees.  The events will also feature the two singers Adeoya Ajibola and Olumide Oyibokure (Lumynos). 

The event will hold at the Debonair Bookstore 294 Herbert Macaulay Way, Sabo Yaba Lagos.

Book N Gauge 17 will be hosted by Emmanuel Iduma, author of the Rave-making book, Farad.

Time is 2pm prompt

The Writers

Betty Abah is a Nigerian poet, journalist and environmentalist. She worked previously with  TELL and Newswatch Magazine and had a stint with the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, CO, USA as an Alfred Friendly Fellow in 2006. Currently she works with the Environmental Rights Action as an environmental and gender rights advocate.

In 2006, she was awarded the Alfred Friendly Press Fellowships, a six-month reporting fellowship which places young journalists from developing countries in American newsrooms. She is also a fellow of the John Knight Health Reporting Fellowships, the Kaiser Family Foundation Fellowship (2006) as well as the 2010 Global Tobacco Control Leadership Training at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, USA.

Abah, 38, has authored two books of poetry Sound of Broken Chains and Go Tell our King, two inspirational pocketbooks, Pending Thoughts (Volume 1 and 2) and has published widely both in local and international journals. 

Abah has read her works at several for a across the country. Earlier this April she was Guest Writer of the Month at the Abuja Writers’ Forum. She has read at the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), Lagos branch, PEN, Lagos Branch and recently at the Garden City Literary festival in Port Harcourt. She is working on more literary works including prose and poetry.

Andrew Eseimokumo Oki, author Bonfires of the Gods

In March of 1997 violence broke out in the Warri area centered on the creation, by the then military regime, of a new local government area, Warri South-West, and the location of its headquarters. An Ijaw expectation based on official statements that the local government headquarters would be in Ogbe-Ijoh, an Ijaw town, was disappointed when the location published in the federal government gazette turned out to be Ogidigben, an Itsekiri area. From March to May, widespread clashes continued, in which hundreds of people from each ethnic group died. Bonfires of the Gods tells the heart-rending fictitious accounts of the real life experiences of people who suffered great losses during the violent outrage and one of the most unexpected and irrelevant wars the world had ever seen, throwing a once peaceful and lovable city into a massive chaos. The novel is set in the backdrop of the Ijaw-Itsekiri ethnic clash of 1997 in the city of Warri, Delta State of Nigeria. Bonfires of the Gods is a story of love and hate, life and death, and a quest for survival in one's own homeland.

Abubakar Adam Ibrahim

Abubakar Adam Ibrahim has dabbled into poetry and plays but is more at home with prose, where he likes to explore characters and plots. He won the BBC African Performance Prize in 2007 and the ANA/Plateau/Amatu Braide Prize for Prose the following year. He also emerged runner-up for the ANA Plateau Poetry Prize.

He is a fellow of the British Council Radiophonics creative writing workshop and has been selected for the Fidelity Bank Creative Writing Workshop as well as the Caine Prize for African Writing Workshop (2012).

He has been featured on several online webzines where his short fictions and essays have been well received locally and internationally. He has also been featured in Daughters of Eve and Other Stories from Nigeria published by CCC Press, London in 2010.

His debut collection of short of stories, The Whispering Trees, is published in Nigeria by Parresia Publishers, Lagos and has been described as a series of wonderful character portraits Educated at the University of Jos, Nigeria, where he Obtained a degree in Mass Communication, Abubakar had a stint with the Vanguard newspapers. He is currently the Arts Editor of the Abuja based Sunday Trust newspaper.  

The Performers

Ajibola Adeoya

Adeoya Ajibola is a singer/song writer/ instrumentalist/ writer/ poet, A graduate of Industrial Chemistry from the University of Ibadan, he is the convener of SPIN Africa.

Olumide Oyibokure (Lumynos)

Lumynos is a vibrant, multi-talented and promising artist. 

He is a powerful vocalist, song writer, composer and Guitarist. He plays a blend of soul, pop and soft Rock. Lumynos is known for his carefully selected lyrics, which carries a strong message of Hope, filled with depth and wits. He has performed in several shows and concerts which also include spoken words and poetry shows such as “chill and relax” and “word up” to mention a few. He wrote a jingle for a program on Top Radio 90.9 fm, titled “Top of the Morning” with Tosyn Bucknor, the jingle rose to become the program’s favourite among several others