Emmanuel Iduma is one of the grantees of the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant Program 2017.
The Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant Program awards grants to writers of arts articles, blogs, books, and short-form pieces. A total of $760,000 will be given to 23 writers, with individual grants ranging from $15,000 to $50,000 this year.
Iduma gets the grant for A Sum of Encounters which will be a year-long blog featuring intimate portraits of artists based in Nigeria and/or the United States. Each portrait will be developed following studio visits and lengthy conversations, culminating in short narrative essays that elucidate the triangular relationship between artist, artwork, and history.
Emmanuel Iduma is no stranger to the African literary scene. He and his buddy Dami Ajayi founded the Saraba literary journal that is considered to be one of the most important on the continent. That journal was the first home for some of the names that are considered the top names today.
One of the finest nonfiction writers the continent has ever produced, Iduma has contributed essays on art and photography to Guernica, ARTNews, Aperture, the Brooklyn Rail, and the British Journal of Photography. The faculty member of the MFA Art Writing Program at the School of Visual Arts, New York also co-curated the Nigerian Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale and co-edited Gambit: Newer African Writing A Stranger’s Pose.
It’s not all nonfiction with this multitalented Nigeria as has fiction in his writing quill having authored the novel The Sound of Things to Come which was first published as Farad in Nigeria.
We are all looking forward to reading his travelogue which is forthcoming from Cassava Republic Press in 2018.
For a full list of the grantees click here.
P.S. We are not certain about this but its looks like Emmanuel Iduma may be the first African to receive this grant.
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