Kanchana Ugbabe will address the relationship between writing and risk in the context of the conflict zones we come from. The act of writing is an act of reaching out to readers, which in turns leads to survival and action. Women survive through establishing community and attempts at peace-building. Silence is broken and words and stories are passed on.

Kanchana Ugbabe is a Writer at Risk in Residence with Fordham’s English Department, a position in partnership with PEN America, Artists at Risk Connection (ARC), and Westbeth Artists Housing. Prior to coming to Fordham, Kanchana was a Visiting Scholar in Harvard University’s Women and Gender Studies program, and she spoke at Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Clinic Forum in 2017.

Ugbabe is a professor of English and African Literature at the University of Jos, Nigeria, and the author of a collection of short stories, Soulmates, published by Penguin in 2011. She has edited two collections of essays on the writings of the Nigerian novelist Chukwuemeka Ike and contributed three chapters to the Dictionary of Literary Biography focusing on African writers. Ugbabe holds a doctorate from Flinders University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia. She holds a master’s in English literature from the University of Madras, India.

Leitner International Law Lecture Series