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Veronique Tadjo

Biography

Véronique Tadjo is a writer, academic, artist and author of books for young people. Born in Paris, she grew up in Abidjan (Côte d´Ivoire) where she attended local schools. She earned a B.A. in English from the University of Abidjan and a doctorate from the Sorbonne, Paris IV, in African American Literature and Civilization. In 1983, she went to Howard University in Washington, D.C. on a Fulbright research scholarship. In 1979, she chose to teach English at the Lycée Moderne de Korhogo (secondary school) in the North of Côte d´Ivoire. She subsequently became a lecturer at the English department of the University of Abidjan until 1993 when she took up writing full time. She began writing and illustrating books for children in 1988 with her first book Lord of the Dance, an African retelling. She was prompted by the desire to contribute to the emergence of literature for children in Africa. Her second book, Mamy Wata and the Monster won the Unicef Award in 1993 and has been published into 8 dual language editions. It is also on the list of the 100 Best African Books of the Century. In the past few years, she has facilitated workshops in writing and illustrating children´s books in Mali, the Benin Republic, Chad, Haiti, Mauritius, French Guyana, Burundi, Rwanda and South Africa. She has also been a member of judging panels for several literary international prizes and has been a facilitator in creative writing workshops. She has lived in Paris, Lagos, Mexico City, Nairobi and London. After 14 years in South Africa where she was Professor and head of French and Francophone Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg (2007-2015), she now shares her time between London and Abidjan.

News / Ranking / Titbits / Awards

Tadjo received the Literary Prize of L’Agence de Cooperation Culturelle et Technique in 1983 and the UNICEF Prize in 1993 for Mamy Wata and the Monster, which was also chosen as one of Africa’s 100 Best Books of the 20th Century, one of only four children’s books selected. In 2005, Tadjo won the Grand prix littéraire d’Afrique noire and in 2016 the Bernard Dadié national grand prize for literature. Her 2021 book In the Company of Men won the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction.

Talent

Veronique Tadjo

Biography

News / Ranking / Titbits / Awards

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