Molara Wood (born 1967)
Editorial Board, ''Sentinel Poetry Quarterly''. is a Nigerian creative writer, journalist and critic. She has been described as "one of the eminent voices in the Arts in Nigeria". Her short stories, flash fiction, poetry and essays have appeared in numerous publications. These include ''African Literature Today'', ''

Chimurenga ''Chimurenga'' is a word in the Shona language. The Ndebele equivalent, though not as widely used since the majority of Zimbabweans are Shona speaking, is ''Umvukela'', meaning "revolutionary struggle" or uprising. In specific historical term ...

'', ''

Farafina Magazine ''Farafina Magazine'' was a bi-monthly Nigerian magazine published online from 2002, and in print from October 2005, until 2009 by Kachifo Limited. It was a general-interest African magazine that included non-fiction articles alongside fiction p ...

'', ''Sentinel Poetry'', ''DrumVoices Revue'', ''Sable LitMag'', ''

Eclectica Magazine ''Eclectica Magazine'' is one of the oldest surviving online literary publications. History and profile Founded in 1996 by Chris Lott and Tom Dooley, ''Eclectica'' extensive and growing archives contain poetry, fiction, non-fiction, miscellany, t ...

'', ''The New Gong Book of New Nigerian Short Stories'' (ed.

Adewale Maja-Pearce Adewale Maja-Pearce (born 1953) is an British Nigerian, Anglo-Nigerian writer, journalist and literary critic, who is best known for his documentary essays. He is the author of several books, including the memoirs ''In My Father's Country'' (1987 ...

, 2007), and '' One World: A Global Anthology of Short Stories'' (ed. Chris Brazier;

New Internationalist ''New Internationalist'' (''NI'') is an international publisher and left-wing magazine based in Oxford, England, owned and run by a worker-run co-operative with a non-hierarchical structure. Known for its strict editorial and environmental pol ...

, 2009).Oyebade Dosunmu
"Peripatetic Lives: An Interview with Molara Wood, Author of Indigo"
(interview), ''Aké Review'', 30 November 2015. She currently lives in

Lagos Lagos (Nigerian English: ; ) is the largest city in Nigeria and the List of cities in Africa by population, second most populous city in Africa, with a population of 15.4 million as of 2015 within the city proper. Lagos was the national ca ...

.Wordsbody
blog.

Background

Born in Nigeria, Molara Wood has lived what she describes as "a fairly peripatetic life", encompassing two decades in Britain, where she had initially gone to study ("Three or four years max, was the plan. But life happens. You don’t see the years rolling into each other, then you wake up one day, and you’ve been in England for 20 years"). In a 2015 interview with Oyebade Dosunmu for ''Aké Review'', Wood elaborated: "Even long before my UK days I had lived in Northern and South-Western Nigeria as well as

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

—all by the age of eleven or twelve. There is a sense in which you’re always out of time, out of place—and the years in Britain merely compounded that. The feeling doesn’t go away with return to Nigeria, it merely mutates, as people remark about me coming across as someone from ‘away’, even when I’m trying to blend in. I am therefore pretty sensitive to the permutations of dislocation and re-integration.

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

was a huge tableau for me to observe this theatre of human experience as far as Nigerian immigrants were concerned." In 2007 her fiction was highly commended in the

Commonwealth Broadcasting Association The Commonwealth Broadcasting Association (CBA) is a representative body for public service broadcasters throughout the Commonwealth, founded in 1945. A not-for-profit non-government organisation, the CBA is funded by subscriptions from 102 memb ...

's Short Story Competition,. In 2008 she won the inaugural John La Rose Memorial Short Story Competition. Since returning to Nigeria, she has been Arts and Culture Editor of ''

Next Next may refer to: Arts and entertainment Film * ''Next'' (1990 film), an animated short about William Shakespeare * ''Next'' (2007 film), a sci-fi film starring Nicolas Cage * '' Next: A Primer on Urban Painting'', a 2005 documentary film Lit ...

'' newspaper (which ceased publication in 2011), and currently writes an Arts column for ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' in

, where she is now based. During her time at ''Next'' she was the editor for

Teju Cole Teju Cole (born June 27, 1975) is a Nigerian-American writer, photographer, and art historian. He is the author of a novella ''Every Day Is for the Thief'' (2007), a novel ''Open City'' (2011), an essay collection ''Known and Strange Things'' (20 ...

´s ''Letters to a young Writer'' series. She is also a blogger. Her collection of short stories, ''Indigo'', was published in 2013 by

Parrésia Publishers Parrésia, also Parrésia Publishers Ltd, is a publishing company in Nigeria founded by Azafi Omoluabi Ogosi and Richard Ali in 2012 with the aim of selling books to the Nigerian reading audience and promote the freedom of the imagination and th ...

.Anote Ajeluorou
"Molara Wood kicks off CORA Book Trek 2016 with reading from Indigo, Route 234"
''The Guardian'' (Nigeria), 17 July 2016. ''Indigo'' was well received, with ''Critical Literature Review'' calling it "a reader's pleasure". As Oyebade Dosunmu writes: "Wood tells stories of people who inhabit in between ‘indigo’ spaces: the borderland of immigration, the no-man's-land of multiculturalism and the frontiers of social mobility. These worlds spiral into one another and their inhabitants spin along, negotiating extremes of human circumstance—barrenness, the (fated) pursuit of glamour, madness, death—struggling, all the while, to plant roots in shifting sand." Many of the stories dealt with the lives of African women negotiating concerns such as barrenness, polygamy and widowhood. Wood has said that "these are the writings of a womanist and a feminist. I have a great empathy, a well of feeling for what women go through. I don’t feel these are given adequate treatment in the writings of male writers, so it’s really up to us, the female writers, to privilege the voices and experiences of women." Wood was a judge for the 2015

Etisalat Prize for Literature The 9mobile Prize for Literature (formerly the Etisalat Prize for Literature 2013–16) was created by Etisalat Nigeria in 2013, and is the first ever pan-African prize celebrating first-time African writers of published fiction books.

. She is on the Advisory Board of the

Aké Arts and Book Festival The Aké Arts and Book Festival is a literary and artistic event held annually in Nigeria. It was founded in 2013 by Lola Shoneyin, a Nigerian writer and poet, in Abeokuta. It features new and established writers from across the world, and its pr ...

and has been a participant in many literary events including the Lagos Book & Art Festival. In 2022, she was appointed a writer-in-residence by the Library of Africa and the African Diaspora (LOATAD), based in

Accra Accra (; tw, Nkran; dag, Ankara; gaa, Ga or ''Gaga'') is the capital and largest city of Ghana, located on the southern coast at the Gulf of Guinea, which is part of the Atlantic Ocean. As of 2021 census, the Accra Metropolitan District, , ...

, Ghana.

Bibliography

*''Indigo'' (short stories), 2013.

References

External links

* Molara Wood'
Wordsbody
blog on arts and culture. * Oyebade Dosunmu
"Peripatetic Lives: An Interview with Molara Wood, Author of Indigo"
(interview), ''Aké Review'', 30 November 2015. * Miriam N. Kotzin

''Per Contra: The International Journal of the Arts, Literature and Ideas''.
@molarawood
Twitter {{DEFAULTSORT:Wood, Molara Living people Nigerian women journalists Nigerian women short story writers Nigerian short story writers 1967 births Writers from Lagos Nigerian feminists Nigerian bloggers Yoruba women writers 21st-century Nigerian writers Nigerian expatriates in the United Kingdom Nigerian women bloggers 21st-century Nigerian women writers Nigerian journalists