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Sade Adeniran

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Sade Adeniran is a Nigerian novelist whose debut novel, Imagine This, won the 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book in Africa.[1] Imagine This was originally self-published by the author. Based in London,[2] she is also a filmmaker.[3]

Biography

Sade Adeniran was born in London, England, to Nigerian parents, and at the age of eight was taken back to her father's village in Nigeria,[2] spending her formative years living with her grandmother in Idogun, Ondo State, before returning to the UK.[4][5]

Adeniran earned degrees in Media and English from Plymouth University and also studied in the US as an exchange student at the University of Massachusetts.[6] She began her writing career with a radio play written for a final-year university project and entitled Memories of a Distant Past; she submitted "on a whim" to the BBC, and it was produced in BBC Radio 4's "First Bite" Festival.[5] She subsequently wrote other theatre pieces, having her work performed in London at the Lyric Theatre, the Bush Theatre and the Riverside Studios.

She was employed as a business change consultant, while also working for five years on her first novel, Imagine This, describing the book's route to publication in the Brunel University newsletter Brunel Link in 2009: "Like most writers who dream of seeing their book in print, I went down the traditional route of sending my manuscript to publishers and agents but the responses were not positive – there didn't seem to be room in the marketplace for a story of a young girl growing up in rural Nigeria. After years of trying to repress my dream of becoming a published author, I finally plucked up the courage to do something. I realised that if I didn't believe in myself, no-one else would."[5] Having left her job, she decided to self-publish and in order to sell the 1100 copies she had printed, she created a website and dedicated herself to a marketing campaign that included appearances on local radio and television.[7]

Told through her diaries, Imagine This chronicles 10 years of the life of Lola, who is sent as a nine-year-old from her home in London to live with relatives in Nigeria.[8] In answer to whether the story is autobiographical, Adeniran says her response is always: "'It is and it isn’t’. Some things in the book are based on real incidents. That village was where I grew up, but what happens to the character Lola is not what happened to me."[2] The novel won the 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book (African region), and was shortlisted for the World Book Day "Books to Talk About" award.[5] It was published by Cassava Republic Press in 2011.[9]

As a filmmaker, Adeniran is currently developing an adapted version of her novel, which reached the second round of the Sundance Screenwriters' Lab,[10] and won the British Urban Film Festival Award for Best Script Talent.[3] Her second film project is entitled A Mother's Journey,[11] and she is working on others.[12][13]

Bibliography

  • Imagine This, SW Books, 2007, ISBN 978-0-9555453-0-6. Cassava Republic Press, 2011, ISBN 978 9784894357.

References

  1. ^ Molara Wood (April 2008). "Interview: Sade Adeniran". BBC. Archived from the original on 26 May 2011.
  2. ^ a b c Mary-Claire Wilson (4 May 2011). "Imaginary World: An Interview with Sade Adeniran". Spike Magazine.
  3. ^ a b "Sade Adeniran", Aké Festival 2016 Guests.
  4. ^ Suzanne Marie Ondrus, "Writing About Writing: African Women's Epistolary Narratives", University of Connecticut dissertation, 8 August 2014, p. 139, citing Yemi Adebisi Senior, "Counting Gains of Nigerian Authors in Democracy", Daily Independent (Lagos), 30 May 2010.
  5. ^ a b c d "Continuing plaudits for debut novelist", Brunel Link Newsletter (Brunel University Alumni Association), 2009, p. 18.
  6. ^ Suzanne Marie Ondrus, "Writing About Writing: African Women's Epistolary Narratives", University of Connecticut dissertation, 8 August 2014, p. 139.
  7. ^ Helen Caldwell, "Interview with Sade Adeniran", My Writing Life, 9 March 2009.
  8. ^ Omiyori Adebare, "Imagine This (by Sade Adeniran)", Africa Book Club, 10 October 2012.
  9. ^ Imagine This at Cassava Republic Press.
  10. ^ Sade. "In Development". Sades World. Retrieved 2020-10-30.
  11. ^ "A Mother's Journey (official trailer)" at Vimeo.
  12. ^ "News", Sade's World.
  13. ^ More Cake at London International Black Film Festival, 10 November 2015.
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