Toni Morrison and other Nobel Laureates read in honor of the 70th birthday of literary giant and human rights activist Wole Soyinka.Wole Soyinka, born near Ibadan, Nigeria, is world renowned for his numerous dramatic works, novels, essays, and poems. Known for his outspoken criticism of the Nigerian government, especially during its civil war, Soyinka appealed in an article for a cease-fire between opposition groups and the government. As a result, he was arrested in 1967, accused of conspiring with the Biafra rebels, and was held as a political prisoner for 22 months until 1969. Currently, the first Alphonse Fletcher Fellow at Harvard University's W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, Soyinka received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986 and participated in the evening's festivities by reading from his own imaginative and groundbreaking work.
Hosted by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., director of the Du Bois Institute, the event features some of the world's literary masters reading from their work. In addition, A Season of Laureates includes individual introductions by Homi F. Bhabha, Anne F. Rothenburg Professor of English and Literature, Harvard University; novelist Jamaica Kincaid, Visiting Lecturer on African and African American Studies and Literature, Harvard University; K. Anthony Appiah, Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy, Princeton University; and Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.