Writer in Residence, 2018

Kanchana Ugbabe is an Indian-Nigerian Writer and scholar, and a former writer in residence at the New York Artists Safe Haven Residency Program, during which she taught creative writing at Fordham University. Kanchana’s work surrounds cross-cultural negotiations and ethno-religious conflict in the city of Jos, Nigeria. She spent a year as Scholar at Risk at Harvard University, and many years as a professor of English at the University of Jos. Ugbabe’s stories have been read on the air for BBC World Service. Her collection of short stories, Soulmates, was published by Penguin in 2011. Ugbabe has also edited two collections of essays on the writings of the Nigerian novelist Chukwuemeka Ike. Her work has been published in international journals, and she has contributed three chapters to the Dictionary of Literary Biography, focusing on African writers.