Abubakar Adam Ibrahim’s biography, fact, career, awards, net worth and life story

Intro Nigerian novelist, journalist
Is Writer
From Nigeria
Type Literature
Gender male
Birth

1979, Jos, Plateau State, Nigeria

Age 42 years
Education
University of Jos

Abubakar Adam Ibrahim (born 1979) is a Nigerian creative writer and journalist. He was described by German broadcaster Deutsche Welle as a northern Nigerian “literary provocateur” amidst the international acclaim his award-winning novel Season of Crimson Blossoms received in 2016.

Career

Abubakar Adam Ibrahim was born in Jos, North-Central Nigeria, and holds a BA degree in Mass Communication from the University of Jos.

His debut short-story collection The Whispering Trees was longlisted for the inaugural Etisalat Prize for Literature in 2014, with the title story shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing.

Ibrahim has won the BBC African Performance Prize and the ANA Plateau/Amatu Braide Prize for Prose. He is a Gabriel Garcia Marquez Fellow (2013), a Civitella Ranieri Fellow (2015) and a 2018 Art OMI Fellow. Ibrahim was the recipient of the 2016 Goethe-Institut & Sylt Foundation African Writer’s Residency Award. In 2014 he was selected for the Africa39 list of writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define future trends in African literature, and was included in the anthology Africa39: New Writing from Africa South of the Sahara (ed. Ellah Allfrey). He was a mentor on the 2013 Writivism programme and judged the Writivism Short Story Prize in 2014. He was chair of judges for the 2016 Etisalat Flash Fiction Prize.

His first novel, Season of Crimson Blossoms, was published in 2015 by Parrésia Publishers in Nigeria and by Cassava Republic Press in the UK (2016). Season of Crimson Blossoms was shortlisted in September 2016 for the Nigeria Prize for Literature, Africa’s largest literary prize. It was announced on 12 October 2016 that Ibrahim was the winner of the $100,000 prize.

Ibrahim is the Features Editor at the Daily Trust newspaper. Ibrahim’s reporting from North-East Nigeria has won particular critical acclaim. In May 2018 he was announced as the winner of the Michael Elliot Award for Excellence in African Storytelling, awarded by the International Center for Journalists, for his report “All That Was Familiar”, published in Granta magazine in May 2017. Ibrahim was a 2018 Ochberg Fellow at the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

He lives in Abuja, Nigeria.

Publications

  • “Night Calls” in Daughters of Eve and Other New Short Stories from Nigeria (CCC Press, 2010)
  • “Echoes of Mirth” in Africa39: New Writing from Africa South of the Sahara (London: Bloomsbury, 2014)
  • The Whispering Trees (Parrésia Publishers, 2012; ISBN 978-9789237258)
  • Painted Love in Valentine’s Day Anthology 2015 (Ankara Press, 2015)
  • Season of Crimson Blossoms (Nigeria: Parrésia Publishers, 2015; UK: Cassava Republic Press, 2016)
  • “All That Was Familiar” (Granta, 2017)
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