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Emeka Agbayi, writer and
consultant on Strategic Communication, holds BA and MA degrees
in English (Comparative Literature) from the University of
Nigeria, Nsukka. He has worked in advertising, publishing and
journalism. He currently edits Host Magazine, among his other
duties at Nigeria LNG Limited.
In the past one decade plus, Agbayi has been actively involved
in the evolution of literature and visual arts in Nigeria.
Agbayi has organised several literary events and readings for
fellow writers in Nigeria. In 1997, he curated Dance of the
Lyrical Lines '97 at the British Council in Enugu, an exhibition
of drawings emergent from the workshop organized for select art
students of Institute of Management and Technology, IMT, Enugu,
Nigeria and University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria by the
Art-in-Africa Project, AAP.
In May 2003, he curated Triumph of Asele, an art exhibition by
established and upcoming Nigerian artists in honour of Prof.
Uche Okeke of the Zaria Art Society fame and one of the modern
day pioneers of Uli iconography in Nigeria.
The Rediscovery of Tradition: Uli in Nigerian Modernism, an art
exhibition focusing on the Uli heritage of the Igbo of
south-eastern Nigeria and its influence on some modern Nigerian
artists held at Pendulum Art Gallery, Lagos, Nigeria in January,
2005 and at SANAVA Gallery, Worcester, South Africa in March,
2005. It was curated by Krydz Ikwuemesi and Emeka Agbayi. Agbayi
co-edited, with Krydz Ikwuemesi, The Rediscovery of Tradition:
Uli and the Politics of Culture (Lagos: Pendulum Centre for
Culture and Development, 2005), a commemorative publication on
the exhibition.
Emeka Agbayi has served as Secretary, Association of Nigeria
Authors, Enugu State Chapter, and is a member of the Nigerian
Institute of Public Relations and Nigerian Guild of Editors.
He has been the editor of Nigerian Peer Promoters' Youth
Heartbeat, funded by John D. and Catherine T. Foundation. He has
also edited The Bond and NLNG: The Magazine, the in-house and
industry magazines respectively of Nigeria LNG Limited. His
poems and short stories have been published and read at several
fora.
He is a director and founding member of Ivory Book and
Readership Club, a CBO with interest in the promotion of
reading, and the director of ArtHouse Africa, an NGO engaged in
promoting African art and culture.
Emeka Agbayi is currently engaged in the project: Talk Isn’t
Cheap: Nigerian Poets on their Art and Craft, a work which has
taken him round Nigeria interviewing about 40 poets.
He is the author of Stars Die (Hybun, Lagos: 2004), first Runner
Up for 2004 ANA/NDDC Prize for Poetry.
In November of 2004, he was at Millay Colony for the Arts,
Austerliz, New York, USA, where he worked on his forthcoming
volume of poems – Four Serenades: Water, Earth, Wind and Fire.
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