Born 31st January 1988 in Nigeria Onyeka Nwelue has achieved a lot within a short while.At the age of 18,he wrote his first book The Abyssinian Boy a critically-acclaimed literature, which won the T.M Aluko Prize for First Book of Fiction and came second at the Ibrahim Tahir Prize for Fiction at the 2009 Abuja Writers Forum Literary Contest. This book saw him nominated to the Future Awards three times.
To prove he was not a one-hit wonder,he followed Abyssinian Boy up with Burnt, a narrative in verse, which was published in 2014 to worldwide critical acclaim and described by British-Hungarian poet, George Szirtes as ‘breathless’. Channel O has described him as ‘an unalloyed genius.’
26 year-old Nigerian writer and filmmaker, has been appointed a visiting lecturer of African Studies at the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, Faculty of Arts, at the University of Hong Kong.
Nwelue dropped out of the University of Nigeria where he was studying Sociology & Anthropology to focus on writing and film making.He has been invited and participated at the 2nd International Writers’ Festival – India, Jaipur Literature Festival-India, Man Hong Kong International Literary Festival- Hong Kong, DSC South Asian Literary Festival – UK and Lagos Book and Art Festival – Nigeria. He has received a grant from the Institute for Research on African Women, Children and Culture (IRAWCC), Arizona, USA. He is the editor of FilmAfrique , the exciting new film magazine, published by Africa Film Academy, curators of the Africa Movie Academy Awards.
Nwelue is the Founder and C.E.O of Blue and Hills Consultancy a literary agency and a arts promoter,helping young writers succeed by recommending them to publishers, both within and outside Nigeria.
Furthermore, he is a 2013 recipient of the 2013 Prince Claus Fund Ticket Grant, which he won to travel to Uganda for Writivism Festival and meet the Idi Amin family.
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