A List
4/17/00

NOBEL PRIZE WRITER TO SPEAK AT ST. LAWRENCE

CANTON -- Wole Soyinka, one of Africa's most versatile 
intellectuals and the winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize for 
Literature, will lecture and read from his work in two appearances 
at St. Lawrence University.
	Soyinka will give a lecture on Wednesday, April 26, at 8 p.m. 
in Gulick Theatre on campus; he will read from his works on Thursday, 
April 27, at 8 p.m. in the Common Room of Sykes Residence Hall. Both 
events are open to the public, free of charge.
	A playwright, poet, novelist and critic, Soyinka has published 
over 40 works. In the book Wole Soyinka's Theatre, author Biodun Jeyifo 
wrote that with his plays -- the core of his creative work -- Soyinka 
"pushes the potential of aesthetic and performance modes derived from 
traditional ritual and ceremonial enactments such as trance, possession, 
incantatory poetry and gestural conceits."
	The problems of Africa, particularly the tragic performance of 
politicians and military dictators, have continued to have an impact 
on Soyinka's writings and activities. In Open Sore of a Continent: A 
Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crises (1996), he examines the nature 
of leadership, power play and their effects on the nation.
	Soyinka is Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts at Emory University. 
	These events are part of "African Arts: Into the Next Millennium," 
a program of public lectures and readings by eminent African cultural producers, 
and the St. Lawrence Writers Series.


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