Award-winning author Chris Abani lectures at UNCW
Amanda Smith | Staff Writer
Issue date: 9/17/09 Section: Lifestyles
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According to the Sept. 3 press release, "Abani's lecture, 'Stories of Struggle, Stories of Hope: Art, Politics, and Human Rights,' is co-sponsored by University College as part of the Synergy Common Reading Program, UNCW Student Media, and the Department of Creative Writing."
Abani, a Nigerian-born writer, is best known for his stories that convey the essence of human emotion and struggle. His work includes poetry and prose that radiate to the very core of what it means to be human and illuminates the struggles humans face in defining their own existence.
"We have wrestled with the question of our humanity since man pointed to a star and saw that his finger was not connected to the night sky. Our humanity, this humanness, is something we still cannot fully define," said Abani. "It is in fact more like a black hole. We know that it is there simply by observing and charting the phenomenology of our reactions."
Abani, a professor at the University of California, Riverside, wrote his first novel when he was 16, and has written five works of prose and four collections of poetry.
According to the press release, "A 2009 Guggenheim Fellow, Abani is also the recipient of the PEN USA Freedom-to-Write Award, the Prince Claus Award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a California Book Award, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a PEN Beyond the Margins Award, and the PEN Hemingway Book Prize. His most recent novel, 'Virgin of Flames,' was published in 2007. In addition to being a writer, Abani is a publisher and heads the poetry imprint of Black Goat Press."
Abani explains some of the narratives in his stories are self-revelatory. His own accounts of life and human nature provide a backdrop for some of his most famous works.
"This is what the art I make requires of me-that in order to have an honest conversation with a reader, I must reveal myself in all my vulnerability," said Abani. "Reveal myself, not in the sense of my autobiography, but in the sense of the deeper self, the one we keep too often hidden even from ourselves."
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