Literary Crossroads online with Nana Oforiatta Ayim and Ray Ndebi
Writers Project of Ghana and Goethe-Insitut Ghana proudly feature on our first Literary Crossroads event of the year, a reading and conversation with Nana Oforiatta Ayim (Ghana) and Ray Ndebi (Cameroon). This event will be streamed online via our Instagram accounts @goetheinstitutghana and @writersPG.
Nana Oforiatta Ayim is a writer, filmmaker and art historian. She studied Russian and Politics and worked for the Eastern European section of the Department of Political Affairs of United Nations in New York. She then went on to do a Masters in African Art History. She is a founder of the ANO Institute of Arts and Knowledge through which she has pioneered such projects as The Mobile Museum and The Pan-African Cultural Encyclopaedia; curating groundbreaking exhibitions such as Ghana's first pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2019; and speaking globally on cultural narratives and institution-building in countries like Ghana, Senegal, the UK, US, Germany, Holland, Denmark, France and Brazil. She has made several films, a cross of fiction, travel essay, and documentary, that have been shown at museums like The New Museum, Tate Modern, and LACMA.
She has written for publications like frieze, ArtNews, African Metropolitan Architecture. Her first novel, The God Child, was published by Bloomsbury Publishing in 2019. She is the recipient of various awards and honours, having been named one of the Apollo ’40 under 40’; one of 50 African Trailblazers by The Africa Report; one of 12 African women making history by Okayafrica; and a Quartz Africa Innovator. She received the 2015 the Art & Technology Award from LACMA; the 2016 AIR Award, which “seeks to honour and celebrate extraordinary African artists who are committed to producing provocative, innovative and socially-engaging work”; the inaugural 2018 Soros Arts Fellowship, and was a 2018 Global South Visiting Fellow at Oxford University. She has been appointed to the Advisory Council of Oxford University from January 2020, will be a MOMA Curatorial Leadership Fellow from March 2020, and a Principal Investigator for the Action for African Cultural Restitution from April 2020.
Ray Ndebi is a Cameroonian writer, translator, editor, and a coach in creative reading and writing. He is also promoter of the #QualityBook initiative and a literary agent. He is the author of the novel The Last Ghost, and his short story, Strangers appeared in the recently published anthology, Beyond the Generations: An Anthology for Ama Ata Aidoo at 80. Ray is the founder of Ghost Universe (a team of editors and analysts in Cameroon) and co-founded the Ônoan Literary Agency.
Both writers tell stories that explore the human response to tragedy, the strength of the bonds of family and friendship, and the hand of fate in the lives of their strong, relentless protagonists. Join us online for an hour of interesting conversation with Nana and Ray.
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Date: Wednesday, 20th May 2020
Time: 7.00 PM - 8.00 PM
Online on IG on the following accounts: @goetheinstitutghana and @writerspg