Teju Cole
Teju Cole ( * 27 June 1975 in the U.S. as Obayemi Babajide Adetokunbo Onafuwa ) is a Nigerian- American writer, photographer and art historian.
Life
Teju Cole was born in the United States of America as the son of Nigerian parents, but grew up in Lagos / Nigeria. At seventeen, he returned to the United States. He studied art history and medicine at Kalamazoo College in Kalamazoo / Michigan ( BA), at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London (MA) and at New York's Columbia University ( M.Phil, . Ph.D. candidate). He is a regular contributor to the New York Times, the South African culture magazine Chimurenga, the New Yorker, of Transition magazine, the American Tin House magazine and the English-language literary magazine A Public Space. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches since 2011 as Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York's Bard College.
Works (selection)
- Every Day is for the Thief: A Novel. Novel. Cassava Republic Press, Abuja, Nigeria 2007, ISBN 978-978-080-515-9.
- Open City. Novel. Random House, New York 2011, ISBN 978-1-4000-6809-8. German: Open City. Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-518-42331-8.
Awards
- 2001 and 2002 Andrew W. Mellow Fellow
- 2011 finalist in the National Book Critics Circle Award with Open City
- 2011 The New York City Book Award ( Fiction ) for Open City
- 2011 Open City in the Top Ten Fiction Books of Time magazine
- 2012 Hemingway Foundation PEN Award for Open City
- 2012 Invitation to the International Literature Festival Berlin
- 2012 Rosenthal Foundation Award for Open City
- 2013 International Literature Prize - House of World Cultures for Open City