It promises to be an exciting August edition of the Guest Writer Session with Numero Unoma,Tope Fasua and Su’eddie Vershima Agema as they are poised to showcase various aspects of their creativity on the 31st at Nanet Suites, Abuja.
Numero Unoma is a Nigerian visual artist and writer, with her deepest roots in photography and poetry. Calling herself an Afro-neo-feminist, she has lived and worked in many different cultures, and studied first psychology, then photography & multimedia. All these inform her work, bringing to the fore a perceptive subtlety in her visual work, and a brutal candour in her writings. Her visual work has been described as photographic poetry and her poetry as semantic imagery. A sensitive observer of nuance and minutae, Numero Unoma reveals the extraordinary in the mundane and the ordinary in the peculiar, and strings these together at once with a forthright, sometimes blunt cognisance of reality, but also a subversive, vicarious romanticism.
Unoma worked for many years in wealth management with Merrill Lynch, registered as a
stock-broker on the NYSE and NYMEX. She left the corporate world to produce photographic work through her company Exposure DP, for among others Sir Terence Conran’s Conran Shop and Paperchase, selling in London, Paris, Berlin, New York and Sydney. Natural progression led to her next company, Ethnic Majority which designed, produced and sourced African gifts and lifestyle mainly for the UK and Caribbean market. Her greeting cards, mugs and jewellery in particular became synonymous with the expression of a contemporary African identity from the diaspora.
Unoma has exhibited her work in the US, the UK, Europe and West Africa, exploring a range
themes relating to environment, identity, sexuality, displacement and assimilation. She has published poems and essays in various media. She is a founding member of the Invisible Borders Trans-African Photography Initiative, and parted ways with the group after the third edition.
Tope Fasua , an economist, Chartered Accountant and Finance expert, prides
himself as one of Africa’s young modern historians and sociologists , by choice. Apart from keeping a column with the Abuja-based Sunday Trust newspapers and writing occasionally for other media houses in Africa, he is passionate about contributing his quota to the debate about Africa, using his home country, Nigeria, as case study. A position showcased in his debut book, CRUSHED, which is increasing garnering attention as a major out-of –the-box
perspective. His latest book, Things To Do Before Your Career Disappears, maintains his trend of thinking. Described as a clarion call, the book “ purviews beyond the problem of global unemployment, but speaks to economic and social decisions being made by individuals, households, companies and governments.”
Fasua contextualizes the lessons learnt from contemporary economics into the African setting, because he believes that Africa offers the best raw case study for now, while more work should be done by Africans themselves in documenting, implementing and refining their best ideas.
He hopes to break ranks with the thinking that young people should merely focus on their own material self-betterment.Fasau believes the tragic realities of Africa today is because of the inability of Africans to recognise the need to spend more of their energy and effort, resolving socio-economic paradoxes.
Su’eddie Vershima Agema writes across the major genres, and is an editor as well as development and cultural enth Su’eddie has a love for Post-Colonialism, African Literature and New Writings. He is the Vice Chairman, Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA, Benue Chapter), an alumnus of the Benue State University’s Writers’ League and a member of the Abuja Writers’ Forum. He is also the team leader of SEVHAGE Literary and Development Initiative.
Agema has a degree in English from the Benue State University, Makurdi, where he is currently undergoing a Masters’ degree in Development Studies.He was exposed to literature at an early age by a father who kept the tradition of the moonlight tales, complete with acting roles, local lore, and cultural songs. His mother bought the best of African literary titles that helped build early seeds in him as a scribbler. Elder brothers, Taver, Sever and Gabriel led
the path with stories, comics, and active imaginations. A continuing adventure along literary paths, fellowship with other writers + books too numerous to mention and Aôndo’s divine guidance keeps moulding the scribbler each day.
Agema has been published variously online and in print.His debut collection of poetry is Bring Our Casket Home: Tales One Shouldn’t Tell. He is currently editing a short story and poetry collection of writings from different writers themed on last year’s floods. He blogs at “http://sueddie.wordpress.com” .
The Guest Writer Session which started in June 2008 is generally regarded as the most consistent literary event in the country and has become the template for similar interventions. The August 31st edition starts by 4pm at the Nanet Suites and will include the usual
side attractions of poetry performance, mini art exhibition, and a raffle-draw as well as live music. The Forum, apart from the celebrated Guest Writer Session, holds critique sessions of
works in progress on Sundays at the International Institute of Journalism, Hamdala Plaza, Jimmy Carter Street, Asokoro, Abuja.
