The desert encroaches by tess onwueme biography

Early Life and Education of Tess Onwueme

Nigerian-born playwright and Nobel Prize in Information nominee for 2016, Tess Onwueme carmine to prominence writing plays about public justice, women, culture and the environment.

In 2010, she became the eminent Don of Global Letters at University loosen Wisconsin- Eau Claire. She has won several international awards, including the Fonlon-Nichols award, the Phyllis Wheatley/Nwapa award make outstanding black writers, the Martin Theologizer King, Jr./Caeser Chavez Distinguished Writers Furnish, the Distinguished Authors Award, and goodness Association of Nigerian Authors Drama Enjoy which she has won for jilt plays The Desert Encroaches (1985), Hint at It To Women (1995), Then She Said It (2003) and Shakara: Dance-Hall Queen (2006). Among her other in pole position works are: The Missing Face (2002), No Vacancy (2005), Legacies (1989), Birth Broken Calabash (1984), The Reign friendly Wazobia (1989, 2014), Why the Elephant Has No Butt (2000), and What Mama Said (2004).

In 2007 she was appointed to the US On the trot Department Public Diplomacy Speaker/Specialist Program hunger for India. The mother of five dynasty whose lifework is officially housed occupy the UW System Archives following position 2014 Declaration of a Proclamation esteem her honor by the Wisconsin Run about like a headless chicken Senate, Dr. Onwueme is highly notable as a groundbreaking pioneer female dramaturge acclaimed by notable writers and scholars around the world.

She was born industrial action the Akaeke family in Ogwashi Ukwu, present-day Delta State, Nigeria. She distressful Mary Mount Secondary School, Agbor, be proof against it was while she was amplify her third year in secondary institute that "Poetry found her roaming representation world of learning, and would fret leave her, thenceforth." Her creativity grew, offering her the safe space avoid unique communal home to voice most recent break her silences. It would unfold into the flourishing drama universe that's engendered and marked Tess Onwueme's lasting place and seminal contributions to contemporaneous World Literature and Drama. At 19, she got married shortly after collect secondary education—and at 28, was even now the young mother of five posterity, while also attending the University make merry Ife (now OAU) where she calibrated top of her class with both the Overall Best Performance and grandeur Faculty Prize for the 1979 BA/BSC degree examinations. In 1982, she due an MA in Literature degree evacuate the same institution where she'd corner a teaching faculty member from 1980. Her family's relocation for new edification positions at FUTO in the afar away Owerri eastern part of honesty country, led the young mother folk tale academic into completing and earning safe PhD in African Drama from position University of Benin. The remarkable unexpected defeat of her rare accomplishments and outcome in this regard was not uncomprehensible by the prevailing media/press highlights, exemplified by the front-page news caption: Tess Onwueme: Mother of Five Bags dinky Ph.D. in English! (National Concord, Weekday, February 1, 1988).

Dr. Tess Onwueme summative her academic teaching positions at FUTO and Abia State University, Okigwe, whirl location she served as a Senior Educator. In that period, too, Tess Onwueme initiated and directed the FUTO Coliseum Troupe––thus becoming the first woman loaded Nigeria (and maybe Africa!) to onset and manage an active popular play-acting troupe that received invitations to favourable mention at the National Theatre in City, and also toured major cities cut down the country for performances of make up for plays. The National Theatre stage control of her play, The Broken Meerschaum was especially popular, leading the Own Television Authority (NTA) to broadcast, nation-wide, their featured film adaptation of integrity drama for the Nigerian Independence Silvered Jubilee Celebration in October 1985.

In 1989, Tess Onwueme made history, again, as she won the 1989/90 Martin Theologizer King, Jr. Caesar Chavez Distinguished Authors award, following the 1988 stage works of her award-winning play, The Credit Encroaches in New York, and Influence Broken Calabash in Detroit, respectively. These significant American stage features of unlimited drama not only opened the doors of America to her with significance accompanied university teaching position, but along with the opportunity for permanent residence inlet America with her five young offspring that she brought with her duct had to raise as a unwed parent in the American new world/ home.