Here’s your chance to get to know one of the finest leading ladies of Africa, Ainehi Edoro-Glines – who is a writer and literary educator.
Ainehi Edoro-Glines is profoundly influenced by the literary icon, Chinua Achebe, her life goal has been to bring African literature to the forefront, and more specifically to bring a fresh perspective to the study of the late Nigerian novelist’s work. Her article on Things Fall Apart is forthcoming in The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Enquiry.
The 35-year-old—born in Akure, Nigeria but now living in Chicago—is an Assistant Professor of Literature at Marquette University where she teaches global Anglophone literature, 21st century fiction and literature in digital/social media.
Proud of her? Well, we are too!!
One of her favorite things about her career is her role in guiding students in their discovery of literature as a powerful form of expression. Beyond teaching, she is also a literary blogger and online publisher. As a teenager, Edoro loved 19th century novels with leading female characters, such as novels like George Eliot’s Middle March and Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. She drew much inspiration from watching these characters take stands against the patriarchal norms of their worlds.
Edoro credits her mother, who went from hawking oranges in the streets of Ibadan to building a successful business and single-handedly putting all seven of her children through school, with giving her the drive to succeed in her current work uplifting African voices in literature. Edoro is the founder and Editor of Brittle Paper, an online platform dedicated to African writing and literary culture, something she hopes to expand into a media empire.
Edoro has presented lectures about her work at Yale, Northwestern, The Art Institute of Chicago, University of Wisconsin, Madison and at the Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo, Norway. Her published pieces on African literature and the international literary scene can also be found in The Guardian, OkayAfrica, Chimurenga Chronic, Africa Is a Country and more.
For her own schooling, Edoro received a B.A. from Morgan State University, a historically black college, then went on to receive an M.A. from Kansas University and a Doctorate from Duke University. She is currently working on a book titled Forest Imaginaries: How African Novels Think.
We are not only proud of Edoro, we are also absolutely inspired by her.
Culled from Brittle paper
