Everything You Should Know About Lola Shoneyin, Author Of Award-Winning Novel ‘The Secret Lives Of Baba Segi’s Wives’


Lola Shoneyin is a renowned Nigerian writer, poet, author and speaker popularly known for her novel The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives.

Netflix recently announced a partnership with Mo Abudu to produce a series of this novel alongside that of Wole Soyinka’s ‘Death and the King’s Horseman’, and we can’t wait to see how that turns out.

Here is a brief profile about her.

Early Life

She was born Titilola Atinuke Alexandra Shoneyin on 26 February 1974 in Ibadan, Nigeria She hails from Remo in Ogun State and was the last child and only girl out of six children.

Her maternal grandfather, Abraham Olayinka Okupe was the traditional ruler of Iperu Remo.

She moved to England at the age of six where she attended boarding school.

She, however, had to return to Nigeria over her father’s imprisonment where she completed her secondary education at Abadina College

She obtained a BA (Hons) degree from Ogun State University in 1994/95.

Career

Shoneyin’s first poetry work, So All the Time I was Sitting on an Egg in 1998. Her second volume of poetry, Song of a Riverbird, was published in Nigeria in 2002 while her third, For the Love of Flight was published in 2010.

She attended the renowned International Writing Program in Iowa, USA, in August 1999 and was also in that year a Distinguished Scholar at the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota).

Shoneyin completed her first novel in 2000 followed by her second novel, Harlot.

However, her third novel, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, published in 2010 is what brought her popularity.


 

She has also written for international newspapers, including The Scotsman, The Guardianand The Times.

Shoneyin is the director and founder of the Ake Arts and Book Festival, the biggest annual book festival in Africa.

She also founded BookBuzz Foundation, an NGO for the promotion of arts and culture and Ouidabooks Nigeria, a publishing house.

Personal Life

She is married to Olaokun Soyinka, a medical doctor and the son of Wole Soyinka, and their marriage is blessed with children.

Shoneyin shared the story of how she was sexually harassed by a Deputy Vice-Chancellor in 2019. This was in reaction to the BBC sex for grade documentary.

Awards and Achievements

Shoneyin won the PEN Award in America as well as the Ken Saro-Wiwa Award for prose in Nigeria.

She was also on the list of the Orange Prize in the UK for her novel, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives.

She was named on the Hay Festival’s Africa 39 list of 39 Sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 in 2014.

She was Brittle Paper’s African Literary Person of the Year in 2017.

Shoneyin served as a judge of the 2018 Caine Prize for African Writing.





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