Writer and arts administrator, Lola Shoneyin, who has founded several arts groups including the Ake Arts and Book Festival, tells NKRUMAH BANKONG-OBI about preparations for this year’s edition of the festival, the challenges of writing and the need to encourage the creative enterprise in Nigeria How are preparations for the Ake Arts and Book Festival going? Fundraising has been a challenge this year but we are very fortunate to have secured partnerships with Access Bank, Etisalat and Annoying Logo. The French, Italian and German Consulates in Lagos have been very helpful. We refuse to drop our standards so we are putting on another world-class event. Have you got to the level of preparation where you can begin to invite your guests? We send out informal invites in March/April. Depending on the response we get, we send out formal invites in May. We buy tickets for international and local guests in August/September. The biggest problem that we have is with the visa applications. Last year, three people we had bought international tickets for couldn’t attend because there were complications ranging from their cards being rejected by the online forms to the Nigerian Embassy being totally unhelpful. Nigeria could generate a lot of revenue from tourism but the obstacles and the costs of getting a visa mean people generally don’t want to come here. How about the facilities you need, especially as there are issues with funding? We are in work quite closely with Mrs. Yewande Amusan, the commissioner for the Ogun State Ministry of Culture and Tourism. She understands how events like this put places on the map so we are using the June 12 Cultural Centre in Kuto again. We’ve booked our hotels and are delighted to be in a position to support local industry. With events like this, preparation is key. Also, members of the team are quite clear on what their roles are and what needs to be done. We are on auto-mode. In comparative terms what are you going to do this year differently from what happened last year? One of the ways that we have coped with less funding is to go for smaller, but very powerful productions. This year, we have Qudus Onikeku, an exquisite contemporary dancer – one of the few that we have in Nigeria. He and his Paris-based team are coming to do dazzle us with My Exile is in My Head, based on Soyinka’s prison notes. And it involves dance, music and poetry. We have also invited Tayo Aluko and he’s going to be doing the much-applauded, incredibly well-received drama with music, Call Mr Robeson. We are showing Yaba Badoe’s documentary on The Art of Ama Ata Aidoo, Barnaby Phillips’ Burma Boy and New Morning, sponsored by the Heinrich Boll Foundation. We are also showing Kunle Afolayan’s October 1 and Tunde Kelani’s lastest offering, Yeepa! With regard to writers, poets, filmmakers and thinkers, we have a large number coming from all over Africa like Brony Rheam, Zukiswa Wanner, Siphiwo Mahala, Mukoma Wa Ngugi, Binyavanga Wainaina, Nomboniso Gasa, Clifton Gachagua, Marcus Boni Teiga, Florent Coaou-Zotti, Hawa Golakai, Edwige Dro, Nana Acheampong and many more. The British Council is flying in Stella Duffy, one of the UK’s most exciting voices in fiction and drama. The German Consulate are bringing Vera Botterbusch, a photographer who has been capturing Abeokuta and Isara for the last 20 years. The French are flying in an award-winning filmmaker, Emmanuelle Mougne, who will be giving a three-day workshop on how to make documentaries. We are extremely lucky to have authors like Ben Aaronovitch, Bernardine Evaroisto and Kei Miller with us this year. I’m really thrilled that they agreed to come. [caption id="attachment_14858" align="aligncenter" width="184"] •Lola Shoneyin[/caption] What’s the theme of this year’s event? Last year, it was ‘The Shadow of Memory’. What are you focusing on this year? The focus of the festival this year is ‘Bridges and Pathways’. So, we are looking at conflict along gender lines, along ethnic lines, along language lines and along religious lines. The different panel discussions are all focussed on these areas. For instance, we have a panel discussion titled “Education, Religion and the Scourge of Violence” and here we have various speakers who are going to address these issues with the view to charting a way out. That is hugely important given the current political terrain. Of course, we have people like Okey Ndibe whose book, Foreign God’s Inc, we are launching. We are talking to Chude Jideonwu who wrote Are We the Turning Point Generation? We have Professor Soyinka who is going to talk to Jerome Okolo on ‘Memory as Muse’. Patrick Okigbo is going to have a sit-down chat with President Olusegun Obasanjo about ‘Defining a Legacy’. The idea is to get Africans together to talk about African issues on African soil. How are you able to drive this initiative, audience, and support in a society that appears to be so philistine towards books and hostile to indigenous culture? I am a writer so I can articulate the reasons why culture and literature are critical. I am a living example; my work is a reflection of the society we live in. There is something to learn, there is something entertaining and there is something to be appreciated in all works of art. Sometimes people just need reminding. I wouldn’t say society is philistine; I think we have just become obsessed with material, which in itself is a consequence of widespread poverty. At the Ake Festival last year, we were so encouraged by the number of independent people who just walked in off the streets, keen to participate in the festival activities. Right now, there is a buzz on social media, people are talking about it, people are registering and an unprecedented rate. Our culture, our traditions, out creative output have a way of defining us. What does a writer lose, if she/he has to organise a festival of this nature and magnitude? Writing in itself is a huge task so what does the writer in you lose? You lose the time which should be devoted to your own creative pursuits. But this is something that I really enjoy doing. It’s a polygamous marriage of the things I am passionate about: books, culture and education. I ran Infusion for three years when I was living in Abuja. When I was living in Ibadan in 2001, I founded the Ibadan Arts Renaissance. Bringing people together gives me a real buzz. So, it’s a massive privilege for me to be able to do this. So, you are driven not just by writing but also these other things around books? Totally! I love seeing creative chemistry at work, especially amongst writers–the way they bounce off each other. I’m also cultivating a list of incredibly talented moderators and hosts: Patrick Okigbo, Molara Wood, Eghosa Imasuen, Wana Udobang, Ayodele Morocco-Clark. These are the people who really make things happen. And this year we have Jerome Okolo, Kola Tobosun joining us. I’m happy when I walk into a room and people are engaged in a healthy debate on a topic that I thought in my head one morning. It’s a cycle of creativity – somebody thinks up a theme or a topic, someone else brings it to life, someone else listens and reports it. I take it all very seriously. Let’s get to your own work now. It’s been a while since we had something of the magnitude of The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives. What has been going on between then and now? A lot. I have been doing all sorts of little bits and pieces of creative writing. I’m writing articles, I’m also contributing to journals, magazines. There is never a point where I stop writing. My problem is just finding the time to all the things I am inspired to do. My children are still at the stage in their lives where I have to be present, if not physically, then at least emotionally. I’m finding parenthood to be all-consuming, in a good way. But I’m one for believing that there is a time for everything so the next book is coming. Perhaps, since the publication of Margaret Busby’s Daughters of Africa Speak for Me, there hasn’t been such an explosion of female writing talents as we have in your generation, particularly in Nigeria. What accounts for that surge in female writing? I think it is a function of opportunity. Even in the generation of Soyinka and Achebe, if you look at the ratio of men to women writers at the University College, Ibadan, you will see that that the women were way outnumbered. Writing and expressing one’s self creatively was not always this open to women. I think what has happened over the two decades is that women have become more savvy, with many more engaging with writing as a career, less bogged down by society’s expectations. Of course, being at the right place also helps. A lot of the women writers also have access to publishers in the West who provide the necessary editorial input. This is an excellent metaphor for what’s going on on the continent. Imagine the economic explosion we would witness if women had the opportunity to fulfil their potential with education and opportunities. It is mind-boggling that anyone in this day and age would limit a woman to ‘the home front’. How do you present your own culture completely independently, if you have to depend on someone else for material support or editorial aid when you need to say something that may not be pleasing to the person offering the help? As a new writer publishing in the West, if your editor he says this is what you have to do, you have to give it some serious thought. I have to say that I was very lucky with The Secret Lives of Baba Segi Wives. I was given a free hand to write exactly how I wanted and what I wanted. My editors supported me; I never felt like the Africanness was being beaten out of my work. You were in Germany recently for the presentation of the German edition of your book. What does it mean to you? It’s always amazing each time the book comes out in a new language, in a new market. I have the UK and US edition but then there is the Dutch edition, Italian, Hebrew, Turkish, the German and the French is coming out next year – I know I’m forgetting some. But it’s amazing. I remember looking at the Hebrew edition of my novel and not even being able to recognise my own name. It’s another pat on the head, it makes every bump, every pothole of the journey worthwhile. Your generation appears to be silent about language; how it should be used. Is it that you are busy with the writing not talking about how the material travels across boundaries. One of my big projects for 2016 is to see my novel in Yoruba. For commercial and economic reasons, it does not make much sense to write in indigenous languages. It’s like restricting the market for your books. But preserving our culture and language through the written text is important. Ake Arts and Book Festival is also launching ‘Friquelit next year. As a start, we are with a couple of organisations to translate the work of one Francophone writer into English. We need more cross-fertilisation across the continent.