Call for submissions to book marking Okediran’s 70th birthday

PLANS are afoot to mark the 70th birthday of the writer, medical doctor and politician Dr Wale Okediran in April 2025 with a publication.

‘Medicine and Literature Without Borders: Health, Humanities and Social Justice in the Writings of Wale Okediran’ will explore the multidisciplinary outlook of Okediran’s literary oeuvres.

A statement from the editors, former National President of the Association of Nigerian Authors, Denja Abdullahi and Dr Stephen Kekeghe of the Delta State University, Abraka, invited insightful, well–researched and positioned chapters on the many faces of Okediran’s arts and practices from interested persons.

“This call for chapters seeks to explore Dr Wale Okediran’s rich multidisciplinary contributions to literature, medicine, cultural studies and political discourse. A very significant thrust of this book is how his creative imaginations, newspaper articles, biographical, travel writings have, over the years, contributed to knowledge productions in the field of literature and medicine in Nigeria and Africa,” read the statement.

The Editors disclosed that the sub-themes include ‘Social Vision and Wale Okediran’s Work’, ‘Diseases, Medicalisation and Wale Okediran’s Writings’, ‘Medical Ethics, the Therapeutic Relationship and Wale Okediran’s Writings’, ‘The Medical Humanities, Bibliotherapy, Scriptotherapy and Wale Okediran’s Writings’, ‘Health, Medical Consciousness and Wale Okediran’s Medical Columns’, ‘Politics and Social Justice in Wale Okediran’s Writings’, and ‘The Art of Wale Okediran’s Short Stories.’

The others are ‘Children in Wale Okediran’s Creative Oeuvres’, ‘The Travelogues of Wale Okediran’, ‘Travel Writing as Literature’, ‘The Writer as a Biographer’,  ‘Wale Okediran’s Popular Literature and the Reading Culture’, ‘The Writer in Politics: The Example of Wale Okediran’, ‘The Writer as a Literary Administrator: The Praxis of Wale Okediran’,  ‘The Nexus between Literature and Film and Wale Okediran’s Place,’ and ‘Writers’ Residencies and the Empowerment of Literature’.

The Editors requested contributors “to adhere to the MLA 9th edition style sheet. All essays must be in MS Word, Times New Roman, 12 fonts with 1.5 line spacing (except indented quotations, which should be in single line spacing). The volume of an essay ranges from 5,000 to 7,000 words. The deadline for submissions is December 31, 2024. Dedicated and focused personal tribute essays on any of the identified multi-dimensions of the man, Wale Okediran, will also be welcomed.

All Submissions should be made to the editors through the following email address: waleokediran70@gmail.com.”

From Iseyin, Oyo State, Dr. Okediran is a writer, medical doctor, politician and literary administrator. He was a former General Secretary and President of the Association of Nigerian Authors. Dr Okediran was also Chairman of the Nigeria Book Fair Trust and is currently Secretary General of the Accra, Ghana-based Pan African Writers’ Association. The author of children’s and travel stories is also the founder of the Ebedi International Writers Residency in Iseyin, Oyo State.

Professor Toyin Falola of the University of Texas at Austin, USA, and Professor Taofiq Olaide Nasir of the Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, are on the project’s editorial advisory board.

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