Helon Habila

Helon Habila
Helon Habila, Göteborg 2010
Born	1967 Kaltungo, Gombe State
Citizenship	Nigerian
Alma mater	University of Jos University of East Anglia
Notable awards	2001 Caine Prize
Website
www.helonhabila.com

Authorpix

Helon Habila Ngalabak (born 1967) is a Nigerian novelist and poet. He worked as a lecturer and journalist in Nigeria before moving to England to become the African Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia. In 2002 he published his first novel, Waiting for an Angel. His writing has won many prizes including the Caine Prize in 2001. In 2005/2006 he became the Chinua Achebe Fellow at Bard College, NY.

In 2006 he co-edited the British Council anthology New Writing 14. His second novel, Measuring Time, was published in 2007. His third novel, Oil on Water, which deals with environmental pollution in the oil-rich Nigerian Delta, was published in the US in 2011. His anthology The Granta Book of the African Short Story came out September 2011.

Habila studied at the University of Jos and at the University of East Anglia where he was a Chevening Scholar and now teaches creative writing at George Mason University, Washington D.C.

Habila is a founding member and currently serves on the advisory board of African Writers Trust, "a non-profit entity which seeks to coordinate and bring together African writers in the Diaspora and writers on the continent to promote sharing of skills and other resources, and to foster knowledge and learning between the two groups."

Awards and honors

• 2001 Caine Prize, "Love Poems"
• 2003 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Africa category, Waiting for an Angel
• 2007 Emily Clark Balch Prize (short story), from Virginia Quarterly Review, "The Hotel Malogo"
• 2008 Virginia Library Foundation Fiction Award, Measuring Time
• 2011 Commonwealth Writers Prize, shortlist, Oil on Water
• 2012 Orion Book Award, shortlist, Oil on Water
• 2012 PEN/Open Book Award, shortlist, Oil on Water
• 2015 Windham–Campbell Literature Prize (Fiction) valued at $150,000

Books

• Waiting for an Angel: A Novel (2004), Penguin Books, ISBN 0-14-101006-1
• New Writing 14, (2006) Granta Books. (co-edited with Lavinia Greenlaw).
• Measuring Time: A Novel (2007), W. W. Norton, ISBN 0-393-05251-6.
• Dreams, Miracles, and Jazz: An Anthology of New Africa Fiction (2007), Pan Macmillan (co-edited with Kadija George).
• Oil on Water: A Novel (2010), Hamish Hamilton, ISBN 978-0-241-14486-2
• The Granta Book of the African Short Story (2011), Granta, ISBN 1-84708-247-5; ISBN 978-1-84708-247-3

Further reading

• Press Release for "Writing Africa", panel held at Bard College with Chinua Achebe, Kofi Anyidoho, Emmanuel Dongala, Helon Habila and Caryl Phillips, September 2005.

• "The Making of Habila’s ‘Waiting For An Angel’" by Isaac Attah Ogezi, mentions how his love of literature endeared him to undergraduate lecturers like Obiwu, who referred to him and Toni Kan as his “literary soul-mates”.

External links

• Everything Follows: An Interview With Helon Habila
• Habila's website
• Onomastic study of the name Helon