Profile
Ogochukwu Promise is a psychologist, novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, motivational speaker, career advisor and visual ‘abstract’ artist. She travels around the world motivating and encouraging people to be the best they can be, discovering people’s dynamic potential for productivity and fulfillment and developing Youth Training Programmes as well as strategies for Social/Community work. Her latest motivational book entitled Everything You Need is in You has sold thousands of copies since its publication in July, 2006.
Ogochukwu Promise received the 1999 Cadbury Prize for poetry with her collection of poems entitled My Mother’s Eyes Speak Volumes, while her novel, Surveyor Of Dreams got the 1999 Spectrum Prize for prose, also in that year. In 2000, she was awarded the Okigbo Poetry Prize for Poetry in Africa for her collection: Canals In Paradox. She was honoured with the Spectrum Prize for prose also in 2000 for her novel, Deep Blue Woman. In 2002, she earned the maiden ANA/NDDC Prize with her widely-acclaimed novel, Hall Of Memories, as well as The Matatu Prize for Children’s Literature in the same year with her children’s book, The Street Beggars. In November 2003, she also bagged the Flora Nwapa Prize for prose with her novel entitled Fumes and Cymbals. The following year, 2004, she became a nominee of the British Council Leadership Award in Communication. Her fourth novel, In the Middle of the Night won the first Pat Utomi Book Prize in 2005, while her fifth novel Swollen and Rotten Spaces won the 2005 Flora Nwapa Prize for Literature. In the same 2005, her poetry collection, Naked Among These Hills was selected as one of the three best poetry books in Nigeria by the judges of the Nigeria LNG prize. She is an Azikiwe Fellow in Communication as well as a fellow of Stiftung Kulturfonds. She has enjoyed fellowships in the US, Italy and Germany and has travelled extensively in Europe, Africa and Asia as a scholar, playwright and a poet. She has a Ph.D. in Communication and Language Arts from the University of Ibadan. She is currently the Co-ordinator of Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa instituted by The Lumina Foundation, which she founded. She also expresses herself profoundly in abstract paintings using the medium she is very conversant with which is a fusion of text and painting with the stylish use of the creative hand as a meeting point of muse and expression. Her exhibitions are informal and characterized by improvisations and very artistic innovations.
This multi-talented writer is also the author of the following collections of essays: Creative Writing And The Muse, The Writer As God, Dreams, Shadow and Reality and Wild Letters in Harmattan.
