Politics, literature collide at ANA's 30th convention

The first Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) convention I attended was ten years ago in Port Harcourt in November 2001. I was very young and had just arrived back into the country. I made the long drive south from Jos to Port Harcourt with several other members of Jos ANA, but the taxing journey was worth it. I remember the twentieth anniversary ANA convention as one of the most exciting events I had ever been to, meeting writers, some of whom had come all the way from Kano for the event, and attending the premier performance of Elechi Amadi's play The Woman of Calabar, which left me aching with laughter. At the book tables, I found the book that became one of my favourites, Prison Stories by Helon Habila, the self-published collection of short stories containing his Caine Prize winning story 'Prison Stories' that would later be revised into the novel Waiting for an Angel. My encounter with ANA at that convention and then later in Jos as I became a part of the thriving chapter of Jos ANA was my first experience of the flourishing literary culture in Nigeria. It was also the first time I began to feel I was part of a Nigerian community, rather than living in the out-of-touch margins of expatriate life. It was my membership in Jos ANA that encouraged me to apply for a PhD with a plan to focus on contemporary Nigerian literature in English and write my MA thesis on Helon Habila's Waiting for an Angel. And though my PhD research ended up taking a turn as I became more proficient in Hausa and became more interested in Nigerian films, the writer in me remains a part of ANA, that community of Nigerian authors writing in English, Hausa, and other Nigerian languages.
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