Helon Habila
was born in Nigeria. He worked as a lecturer and journalist in Nigeria before he moved to England to become the African Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia. In 2002 he published his first novel, Waiting for an Angel. His writing has won many prizes including the Caine Prize, 2001, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize, 2003. In 2005/2006 he became the Chinua Achebe Fellow at Bard College, New York.
In 2006 he co-edited the British Council's anthology, New Writing 14. His second novel, Measuring Time, was published in 2007, it won the Virginia Library Foundation Fiction Award, 2008. His third novel, Oil on Water, was published in the US in 2011. His anthology, The Granta Book of the African Short Story came out in September, 2011. Habila teaches Creative Writing at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where he lives with his wife and three children.
Past events
Nigeria and Oil: The Book and the Movie
Helon Habila wrote an acclaimed novel on the effects of oil-drilling in Nigeria. For Dutch tv Thomas Blom made a high-profile documentary on the same subject. A conversation, with film and reading, on the choices the writer and documentary filmmaker had to make. In English.
How to be a Dictator in Africa
Writers David van Reybrouck, Helon Habila and Dinaw Mengestu take us with them in the spirit of of the once so optimistic leaders who, after the independence of their countries, turned into dictators one by one. Andrew Makkinga chairs the discussion. In English.
Young in Africa
The Nigerian writer Helon Habila gives us his 'Manual for the Independent Mind', and talks with the South African writer Niq Mholongo on ambition and political engagement. Chaired by Bas Heijne. English spoken.
