Dr. Naana Banyiwa Horne
An Associate Professor of English and African and African Diaspora Literature in the English Department at Santa Fe College, Gainesville, Florida. Educated in Ghana and the United States, she holds a B.A. Honors in English and Education from the University of Cape Coast in Ghana, an M.A. in English from the University of Florida, Gainesville, and a Ph.D. in African Languages and Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  An educator, scholar, writer, activist, poet, storyteller, and African culture and dance instructor, Professor Horne has held teaching positions in universities in Ghana and the United States, designing and teaching various courses in English, African, African American and Caribbean Literature, and Women's Studies.  She sustains an active life of readings and performances at conferences, writers’ workshops, and community events locally and globally, alongside her profession of teaching, research, and writing.  Dr. Horne has  two published volumes of poetry, Sunkwa:  Clingings Onto Life (1999) and Sunkwa Revisited (2007), both by Africa World Press; a third collection, Budding Life that is forthcoming (2009, Ayebia Clarke Publishing); and she is currently working on her fourth collection of poetry and first collection of short stories.  Her scholarly works and poetry are published in literature anthologies, and peer reviewed journals, and magazines.  She currently lives in Gainesville, Florida.

Elliot Agyare
I attribute my love for books and passion for education to my late father who was a founder and headmaster of a secondary school in Aburi in the Eastern Region of Ghana. Most of my early upbringing was in this sheltered environment, a secondary school compound. I was surrounded with books from my earliest years and cannot remember a time when I was not reading as a child. This habit has continued till today.

 In 1985, I graduated with a B.A. (Hons) from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi in Ghana after which I left for the United Kingdom. My M.A. Degree in International Studies was earned from the University of Salford, near Manchester in the United Kingdom after which I worked for a number of years in the Acquisitions Division of Westminster Libraries in London. In 1993, I returned to Ghana and founded Designplus, a book design and packaging company. In 1997 Designplus Limited metamorphosed into Smartline (Publishing) Limited.  Smartline has published over 64 titles in different genres including textbooks and educational titles, children and adult fiction as well as other general books. I am married to Joyce and we have 2 children a daughter and a son, Nana (20) and Kofi (19)

Biodun Jeyifo
Professor of African and African American Studies and of Literature and Comparative Literature at Harvard University. He taught at Cornell University as Professor of English for eighteen years before coming to Harvard in July 2006. He had previously taught at Oberlin College and at the University of Ibadan and the University of Ife in his native Nigeria. Between 1980 and 1982, he served as the National President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), the country’s professional association of teaching and research faculty; in this position, he helped to shape state policy in the direction of consolidation of academic autonomy and adequate funding of tertiary education in Nigeria. Professor Jeyifo works on the complex connections between literature, critical theory, radical humanities scholarship and twentieth century progressive and revolutionary social philosophy. His most recent book-length publication, Wole Soyinka: Politics, Poetics, and Postcolonialism (Cambridge University Press, 2004), won one of the American Library Association’s Outstanding Academic Texts (OATS) awards for 2005.

Tayari Jones was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia where she spent most of her childhood with the exception of the one year she and her family spent in Nigeria, West Africa. Although she has not lived in her hometown for over a decade, much of her writing centers on the urban south. “Although I now live in the northeast,” she explains, “my imagination lives in Atlanta.”
Her first novel, Leaving Atlanta, is a coming of age story set during the city’s infamous child murders of 1979-81. Jones herself was in the fifth grade when thirty African American children were murdered from the neighborhoods near her home and school. When asked why she chose this subject matter for her first novel, she says, “This novel is my way of documenting a particular moment in history. It is a love letter to my generation and also an effort to remember my own childhood. To remind myself and my readers what it was like to been eleven and at the mercy of the world. And despite the obvious darkness of the time period, I also wanted to remember all that is sweet about girlhood, to recall all the moments that make a person smile and feel optimistic
Leaving Atlanta received many awards and accolades including the Hurston/Wright Award for Debut Fiction. It was named “Novel of the Year” by Atlanta Magazine, “Best Southern Novel of the Year,” by Creative Loafing Atlanta. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Washington Post both listed it as one of the best of 2002. She has received fellowships from organizations including Illinois Arts Council, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, The Corporation of Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, Arizona Commission on the Arts and Le Chateau de Lavigny.
Her second novel, The Untelling, published in 2005, is the story of a family struggling to overcome the aftermath of a fatal car accident. When asked why she chose to focus on a particular family in this work after the sprawling historical subject matter of Leaving Atlanta, Tayari Jones explains, "The Untelling is a novel about personal history and individual and familial myth-making. These personal stories are what come together to determine the story of a community, the unoffical history of a neighborhood, of a city, of a nation." Upon the publication of The Untelling, Essence magazine called Jones, "a writer to watch." The Atlanta Journal Constitution proclaims Jones to be "one of the best writers of her generation." In 2005, The Southern Regional council and the University of Georgia Libraries awarded The Untelling with the Lillian C. Smith Award for New Voices.
Tayari Jones is a graduate of Spelman College, The University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. She has taught at Prairie View A&M University, East Tennessee State University, The University of Illinois and George Washington University. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor in the MFA program at Rutgers-Newark University.

Dr. Esi Sutherland-Addy
Hon D.Litt.(Winneba), Hon Fellow College of Preceptors U.K. is Senior Research Fellow, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana. Her publications are on African literary arts, culture, women and education. She co-edited with Aminata Diaw, Women Writing Africa, West Africa and the Sahel (The Feminist Press, CUNY) and with Anne Adams The Legacy of Efua Sutherland, Pan -African Cultural Activism (Ayebia Clarke Ltd). Sutherland-Addy has been Deputy Minister for Higher Education and Culture and Tourism of Ghana and member of several national and international Boards including the Commonwealth of Learning, The Open Society Initiative of West Africa, and the Forum for African Women Educationalists, The National Commission on Culture and Mmofra Foundation. She is chair of the Board of Afram Publications Ghana Ltd. She has conducted studies for the governments of Namibia, and Ethiopia and UNESCO, UNICEF and The Commonwealth. She was rapporteur general of the Jomtien EFA Conference (1990) and the Hamburg CONFINTEA V (1997).  In July 2008 she was made Honorary Fellow of the Commonwealth of Learning.

Dr. Klorkor Okai
Was raised in Ghana by her parents and four sisters. Her writing career began during her first year at the Wesley Girls’ High School, Cape coast. She has amassed a huge collection. After Wesley Girls’ Okai enrolled in the International Baccalaureate program at the SOS Hermann Gmeiner International College at Tema where she majored in Literature, History and Computer Science. Alongside she continued to write and perform at school functions. After obtaining her IB Diploma, Okai interned for a year in the corporate affairs department of the then Ashanti Goldfield Co Ltd. In August 1999, she enrolled at Temple University, Philadelphia where double majored in Political Science and History. During her Temple years, Okai gave numerous poetry readings at college events and outside the college including wedding ceremonies in Philadelphia. In 2003, she was a featured poet on the program ‘Inner City Blues’ on the radio station, Power 99 hosted by the ace Philadelphia DJ, Tiffany Bacon. In May 2003, she graduated Magna cum laude with honors in both Political Science and History. The faculty also voted her into the national academic fraternity, Phi Beta Kappa. On March 5, 2004, Okai performed a piece during the 1st Annual Celebration of Women’s History: Sisters Defining Sisters held at Temple University. X Magazine, London, in their December 2004 edition published her poem titled I, Pecola Breedlove. Later in 2004, Kwame Jackson, 1st runner-up of the hit American show, The Apprentice published her poem, Ode to the Apprentice on his website. In April 2008, during the Villanova Law School seniors graduating class brunch, Okai wrote and performed Hallelujah Chorus at the dawn of a new morn. Klorkor Okai enrolled in Villanova Law School in August 2005 and graduated with her Juris Doctor degree in May 2008.

Kwame Dawes
Born in Ghana in 1962, Kwame Dawes spent most of his childhood in Jamaica. As a poet, he is profoundly influenced by the rhythms and textures of that lush place, citing in a recent interview his "spiritual, intellectual, and emotional engagement with reggae music." His book Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius remains the most authoritative study of the lyrics of Bob Marley. Kwame Dawes is the author of twelve collections of poetry.  His most recent collections are, Impossible Flying (Peepal Tree, January 2007) and Wisteria (Red Hen, January 2006) which has also been set to music by Kevin Simmonds and premiered at the Royal Festival Hall in London England.  In January 2007, Akashic Books will publish his novel She’s Gone.  His awards include The Forward Poetry Prize, the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and the Poetry Business Award.  His non-fiction writing includes the book A Far Cry from Plymouth Rock: A Personal Narrative (Peepal Tree, January 2007).  Kwame Dawes, former director of the MFA program at the University of South Carolina, is founder and director of the USC Poetry Initiative. Since January 2008, Dawes has been the Associate Poetry editor at Peepal Tree Press.  In 2005 he was appointed the Executive Director of the University of South Carolina Arts Institute.  Dawes is the programmer for the Calabash International Literary Festival held in St. Elizabeth, Jamaica, each year, and is the Director of the Calabash Writer’s Workshop.  Kwame Dawes is a faculty member of Cave Canem and the Louise Frye Liberal Arts Professor in the College of Liberal Arts.  He is Distinguished Poet in Residence at USC.

Meshack Asare

Meshack Asare was born in 1945 in Ghana. He studied Fine Art at the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi and taught for many years. In 1973, he did a course in Educational Psychology with the University of Wisconsin Extension, Madison and established himself as a Specialist in Multi-Cultural Education and a Writer/Illustrator. He also studied Social Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies (S O A S), London University. From 1983 until a few years ago when he went to Germany, he was living and working in London. He is married and has children.
His many Awards include the Austrian National Prize, The Ghana Writers’ Prize, NOMA Award and UNESCO Prize for Tolerance in Literature for Young People.

Ambassador Silcarneyni GUEYE
A diplomat by profession born on November 3rd 1943 in Dakar, Senegal, now retired, is a writer whose poetry has been first published in FLORILEGE DE LA NOUVELLE POESIE ET LITTERATURE edited in 1966 at the eve of the First World Festival of Negro Arts held in Dakar and read during that great event at the National Assembly of Senegal.

In 1981, from Brussels where he was posted as the Senegal Embassy Cultural and Technical Counselor, he published an illustrated book and tape of poems entitled “Toi,je”, dedicated to his half and to all women striving to daily radiate through the Purity of Love.

In 2004, he has his spiritual auto-biography published by the renown Senegalese editing company Maguileen under the title “L’AU-DELA DANS L’EN-DECA” meaning “THE BEYOND WITHIN US”. Ambassador Silcarneyni GUEYE is a very well known public lecturer on subjects concerning the reality of the Grail Quest.

Lesley Naa Norle Lokko
An architect, academic and a novelist. She holds a PhD in Architecture from the University of London and is the author of three published works of fiction, Sundowners (Orion: 2004); Saffron Skies (Orion: 2005) and Bitter Chocolate (Orion: 2008). Her novels have been translated into over fifteen languages and her academic work, White Papers, Black Marks: Race, Culture, Architecture (University of Minnesota Press: 2000) is widely regarded as a seminal text on matters relating to architecture and ‘race’. A former university lecturer in the UK, US and South Africa, she gave up teaching in 2002 to concentrate on writing full-time. She currently lives in Accra, Ghana, where she is principal of her own architectural practice, Lokko Associates, and is hard at work on her fifth novel. Rich Girl, Poor Girl, her fourth novel, is forthcoming from Orion in May 2009.

Professor Andries Walter Oliphant

He is  co-editor of the Journal of Literary Studies and Deputy Editor of the English Academy Review.  He is an editorial board member of several literary journals. and the Founding Editor of Baobab: South African Journal of New Writing which to be launched in May 2008.

His writings on South African literature, art and photography are published locally and internationally. His most recent publications include,   A Writing Life: Celebrating Nadine Gordimer (1998)   At the Rendezvous of Victory and Other Stories (2001) The Art of  Pat Mautloa (2003) Democracy X: Marking the Present Re-presenting the Past (2004)  He is the recipient of the Thomas Pringle  Award for Short Stories and the Book Journalist of the Year Award. He heads the division Theory of Literature at the University of South Africa. 

He was Special International Guest of the Nobel Prize Awards held in Stockholm in 1998 and a participant in the First White House Seminar on Culture and Diplomacy hosted  by Bill Clinton in 2000. He is the Chairperson of the Northern Flagship Institution and a member of the history and culture advisory panel of Freedom Park. He  serves on the Council of the National English Literary Museum.

Arundhathi Subramaniam
Born 1967, is a poet, writer and cultural commentator. She is the author of two books of poetry: On Cleaning Bookshelves (Allied, 2001) and Where I Live (Allied, 2005). Her third volume of new and selected poems is due to be published by UK publisher, Bloodaxe, in February, 2009. She has co-edited an anthology of Indian love poems in English (Confronting Love, Penguin, 2005), and a forthcoming anthology of humourous poems by Indian poets in English (A Pocketful of Wry, Penguin). She is also the author of a prose work, The Book of Buddha (Penguin India, 2005). She lives in Mumbai.
Her poetry has been published in several national and international anthologies and journals, and translated into several languages, including Hindi, Tamil, Italian and Spanish. She was awarded the Charles Wallace Fellowship for a three-month writing residency at the University of Stirling, Scotland, in 2003, and a Visiting Arts fellowship to tour the UK on a series of poetry readings, organised by the Poetry Society, in 2006. She has been invited to read her work in India and at international poetry festivals in Rome (2000), Salerno and Vietri (2001), Malaga, Spain (2004), Florence (2005), England (2006), Cordoba, Spain (2007), Parma, Italy (2008). As literary editor, she was invited to participate in the Rotterdam poetry festival in 2003, 2004 and 2008.

She has since 2004 been the National Editor of the India domain of the Poetry International Web. She has also been curator of an arts forum at the National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai, from 1994 to 2007. As a critic and cultural commentator, she has written on dance, literature, gender and spirituality for various leading national publications for several years.

Emeritus Prof. J.H. Kwabena Nketia
J.H. Kwabena Nketia was born on June 22, 1921 at Mampong Asante. He is a composer, ethnomusicologist, and a writer. He has over 200 publications and more than 80 musical compositions to his credit.

He was Acting Principal, Presbyterian Training College, Akropong-Akuapem, First African Director, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Professor of Music, University of Ghana, Professor of Music at UCLA, Horatio Appleton Lamb Visiting Professor at Harvard University, Visiting Cornell Professor at Swarthmore College, Distinguished Hannah Professor of Integrative Studies at Michigan State University, East Lansing, Visiting Professor at the University of Brisbane in Australia, Visiting Professor at the China Conservatory of Music, Beijing, Andrew Mellon Professor of Music at the University of Pittsburgh, and Langston Hughes Professor at the University of Kansas, Lawrence.

He is the Chancellor, Akrofi-Christallor Institute of Theology, Mission and Culture, Akropong-Akuapem, a Foundation Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts & Sciences, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Society of Great Britain, and Ireland, Honorary Member of the International Music Council (IMC-UNESCO), Honorary Fellow Of the Pennsylvania Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, Honorary Member of the Pan-African Writers Association (PAWA), Member of the International Jury for the Proclamation by UNESCO of Masterpieces of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, and Board Member of the National Commission on Culture,Republic of Ghana.

His numerous Awards include Cowell Award of the African Music Society, Companion of the Order of Star of Ghana, Grand Medal of the Government of Ghana (Civil Division), Ghana Book Award, ECRAG Special Honour Award (1987), Ghana Gospel Music Special Award (2003), ACRAG Flagstar Award (1993), ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for his book on the Music of Africa, IMC-UNESCO Music Prize for Distinguished Service to Music, Prince Claus 1997Award for Distinguished Service to Culture & Development, the Year 2000 Distinguished Africanist Award of the African Studies Association of the USA for Life-long Devotion to African Studies, and DLitt (Honoris Causa) of the University of Ghana.