Teju Cole

Teju Cole, distinguished writer in residence at Bard College, was born in the United States in 1975 to Nigerian parents; he was raised in Nigeria and currently lives in Brooklyn. Cole is an author, art historian, and street photographer.

Teju Cole is the author of Open City (Random House, 2011), which won the PEN/Hemingway Award and the New York City Book Award, and was shortlisted for a National Book Critics Circle Award. He is also the author of a novella, Every Day Is for the Thief (2007). His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Qarrtsiluni, Chimurenga, New Yorker, Transition, Tin House, and A Public Space, among other publications. He is currently at work on Water Has No Enemy, a nonfiction narrative of Lagos, and on Small Fates. He received his B.A. in studio art and art history from Kalamazoo College in Michigan; his M.A. in African art history from the University of London; and his M.Phil. in 16th-century northern European visual culture from Columbia University, where he is working on his Ph.D. He has taught art history and literature at Hofstra University, New York University, and Columbia University. He has received a Rudolf Wittkower Fellowship and Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities (awarded by the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Foundation), and has been interviewed for the documentary film, Wole Soyinka: Child of the Forest.


For more information: http://www.tejucole.com/