Ijeoma Umebinyuo
Writer
Nigeria
Ijeoma Umebinyuo was born in Lagos, Nigeria. Her ancestral home sits between two states, a border town somewhere in Southeastern Nigeria. In 2016, Ijeoma was named one of the top contemporary poets emerging from Africa by Writivism. Her short stories and poems have appeared in The Stockholm Review of Literature, The Wildness, The Rising Phoenix Review, Doll Hospital Journal, The Renaissance Noire, The Gordon Square Review and The MacGuffin. Her poem “Diaspora Blues” is a part of Dr. Rosalba Icaza’s contribution to Routledge Handbook of Postcolonial Politics.
In 2017, Ijeoma was invited to speak at The Cooper Union, her talk Dismantling the Culture of Silence seeks to challenge the culture where silence is seen as a virtue in marginalized communities and how such affect women. Dismantling the Culture of Silence has been used by some teachers to teach students in high school the importance of using their voices. Her poem The Delicate Acts of Survival from her poetry collection Questions for Ada has been selected to be translated into Spanish; it will be published by Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencas Sociales (Latin American Council of Social Sciences) as part of an ebook.