Soyinka wins Lifetime Achievement Award

Wole Soyinka

Professor Wole Soyinka, the 1986 Nobel Laureate in Literature, during the week,  won the Lifetime Achievement Award of the annual Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in America alongside three other people

This year’s event marked the  78th edition of the award organised by The Root and sponsored by the Cleveland Foundation.

Other writers that won awards alongside Soyinka were: Andrew Solomon for Far From The Tree (Non-Fiction), Eugene Gloria for My Favorite Warlord (Poetry), Kevin Powers for The Yellow Birds (Fiction) and Laird Hunt for Kind One (Fiction).

Past winners include Derek Walcott, Toni Morrison, Nadine Gordimer and Wole Soyinka before they won the Nobel Prize.

Annually, since 1935, the Anisfield-Wolf Awards have been honouring books and authors that had made important contributions to our understanding of racism and our appreciation of the rich diversity of human culture.

The book prizes were established by Edith Anisfield Wolf to reflect her family’s passion for issues of social justice in honour of John Anisfield and  Eugene Wolf, both father and husband to the Cleveland poet and philanthropist.