Wole Soyinka

Wole Soyinka "is a leading voice for dignity through freedom for Nigeria, Africa and the world. Educated in Nigeria and England, Soyinka has taught English literature in various Nigerian universities, as well as Cambridge, Sheffield and Yale. He was imprisoned on conspiracy charges for 22 months until 1969 for writing an article suggesting a ceasefire with Biafra rebels. He was charged with treason again by Nigeria's military dictatorship in March 1997. His work as a novelist, dramatist and poet explore both questions of culture and the individual's relation to power. In 1986 the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Soyinka, "who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence". More recently, he gave the 2004 Reith Lecture, entitled "Climate of Fear."

"Soyinka has written extensively. His collected poems include Idanre, and Other Poems (1967), Poems from Prison (1969), A Shuttle in the Crypt (1972), Ogun Abibiman (1976) and Mandela's Earth and Other Poems (1988). His two novels are The Interpreters (1965) and Season of Anomy (1973), as well as autobiographical works, The Man Died: Prison Notes (1972) and Aké (1981) and The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis (1996) and You Must Set Forth at Dawn: a Memoir (2006). Soyinka has written many plays, including The Swamp Dwellers and The Lion and the Jewel (1963), The Strong Breed (1963), The Trial of Brother Jero (1963) and Jero's Metamorphosis (1973), A Dance of the Forests (1963), The Road (1965), Kongi's Harvest (1967), Madmen and Specialists (1971), Death and the King's Horseman (1975), A Play of Giants (1984), Requiem for a Futurologist (1985), From Zia With Love (1992) and The Beatification of Area Boy (1995)."

• Advisory Council, Points of Peace Foundation
• International Advisory Board, Forum 2000 Foundation
• Member, Committee of 100 for Tibet
• Sustainability Board, Lifeboat Foundation