AWF Hosts Toyin Adewale-Gabriel

Born in Ibadan, Oyo State and currently resident in Abuja, Adewale- Gabriel, obtained an MA in Literature in English from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife,  and has worked as a copywriter with the likes of  Oglivy, Benson and Mather, and STB-McCann. She founded the Women Writers of Nigeria in 1991, and is the current Chairperson of […]

Born in Ibadan, Oyo State and currently resident in Abuja, Adewale- Gabriel, obtained an MA in Literature in English from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife,  and has worked as a copywriter with the likes of  Oglivy, Benson and Mather, and STB-McCann. She founded the Women Writers of Nigeria in 1991, and is the current Chairperson of the Women Writers Committee of PEN Nigeria.

In 1995, her book Naked Testimonies won an honourable mention in the ANA poetry awards. She was also a winner in the Liberty Merchant Bank Short Story awards in 1997, and was conferred with a Distinguished Creative Writer of Excellence Award by the Obafemi Awolowo University Literary and English Studies Society.

Regarded as one of the finest ambassadors of modern African writing in fiction and poetry since the early 1990s, she has read her work to audiences in Nigeria, South Africa, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Italy, The Netherlands, Luxemburg and the United States of America.

Her publications include Naked Testimonies,  Breaking The Silence, Co-editor, Inkwells, Co-Editor, Die Aromaforscherin (Edition Solitude, Stuttgart, 1998), Flackernde Kerzen, 25 New Nigerian Poets, Editor (Ishmael Reed Publishing, Berkeley, 2000).

Recently, Bitter Chocolate, her book of 20 short stories, was put out  by Mallory Publishing in England. The book is a collection of stories, focusing on what it means to be Nigerian and female.  The title story, Bitter Chocolate is about a female journalist incarcerated under a  dictator and the tension between the professional life and her anxieties as a wife and mother. The story was inspired by the Abacha years.  Some stories in Bitter Chocolate have been previously published in German and Turkish translations.

At the Guest Writer Session featuring Adewale-Gabriel, copies of her books will be on sale and there will be the usual side-attraction mini-art exhibition, performance poetry, live music and an improved raffle-draw.  The Abuja Writer’s Forum meets three Sundays each month and hosts a reading on every last Saturday at the International Institute of Journalism and Pen and Pages respectively.