WVU to host 33rd Annual Meeting of the African Literature Association

Morgantown, WV, March 8, 2006: More than 250 writers and scholars from around the world will celebrate the literature of Africa and explore the culture phenomenon of globalization at the 33rd annual meeting of the African Literature Association in Morgantown next week.

The conference will be from March 14 to 18 at the Waterfront Place Hotel in Morgantown. This year’s theme is “African Literature and the Cultural Dynamics of Globalization.”

Activities will include poetry readings, roundtable discussions with African writers, performances by a griot (a West African poet and musician), a creative writing workshop, and a program of African cinema. Ellie Manette, artist-in-residence at WVU and “father of the steel drums,” will offer a lecture and performance. All of these activities are free and open to the public.

On-campus lectures will be offered at 4 p.m. on Thursday, March 15 and Friday, March 16 in the Mountainlair’s Rhododendron Room. Josefina Baez, formerly of the Dominican Republic and now residing in New York, will speak on Thursday. Syl Cheney-Coker, of Sierra Leone, will give a poetry reading on Friday.

Other guest speakers include African authors and poets Tierno Monénembo, Dennis Brutus, Régina Yaou, and Nawal El Saadawi, who will be honored as the 2007 recipient of the Association’s Fonlon-Nichols Award. The award is given annually to an African writer for excellence in creative writing and for contributions to the struggles for human rights and freedom of expression.

The African Literature Association is an independent, non-profit, professional society open to scholars, teachers, and writers from every country. It exists primarily to facilitate the attempts by a world-wide audience to appreciate the efforts of African writers and artists. The organization welcomes the participation of all who produce the object of our study and hopes for a constructive interaction between scholars and artists. More information is available at http://africanlit.org.

The conference is sponsored in part by a grant from the West Virginia Humanities Council. Co-sponsors include the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at WVU, the Department of English, the Department of Foreign Languages, the Center for Women’s Studies, the Office of International Programs, the Department of History, the Africana Studies Program, and the Center for Black Culture and Research.

For more information, please visit http://forlang.as.wvu.edu/ala or contact Dr. Janice Spleth, Department of Foreign Languages, at 304-293-5121, ext. 5532, or at Janice.Spleth@mail.wvu.edu.

W-V-U