Energetic and high-spirited, the fact that she was AWF’s Guest Writer on January 30, 2010 couldn’t have escaped the attention of anyone who walked into the venue as a first time attendee. Eugenia would easily have been picked out from the teeming crowd as she greeted guests and passed compliments at friends; who gathered at the Pen and Pages Bookstore, Abuja venue of the event.

Humans are visual creatures. We devour graphic information to feed our senses, and most of the times we enjoy it. Lately, videos, photographs and illustrations full of shock values are flooding the globe. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then buckle up.

After a very exciting and successful 2009 literary season which featured readings by national and international writers, creative writing workshops, weekly critique sessions and an acclaimed and widely patronized national literary contest, the precocious Abuja Writers’ Forum (AWF) is set to kick-start its 2010 literary calendar with a trio of writers billed for the First Quarter Guest Writer Session.

The recent attempt by a Nigerian youngster, Farouk Abdulmutallab, to bomb an American Delta airline on December 25, 2009 has no doubt brought Nigeria in confrontation with world power, USA. The commotion has even resulted in former American attaché to USA embassy in Nigeria, Ambassador, Princeton Lyman telling Nigeria that it is fast becoming irrelevant in the world.

It is now five months since the issue of looted African terracotta was raised in connection with the exhibition entitled “African Terra Cotta: a Millenary Heritage”, at the Barbier-Mueller Museum, Geneva and brought to the attention of all concerned. A group of renowned scholars alleged that many of the objects on display had been looted from Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali, Niger and Nigeria.