27 Facts About Kola Tubosun

Kola Tubosun is a Nigerian linguist, writer, translator, scholar, cultural activist and film-maker.

Kola Tubosun is the recipient of the 2016 Premio Ostana "Special Prize" for Writings in the Mother Tongue for his work in language advocacy.

Kola Tubosun writes in Yoruba and English, and is currently the Africa editor of the Best Literary Translations anthology, published by Deep Vellum.

Kola Tubosun holds a master's degree in Linguistics from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and a BA from the University of Ibadan.

Kola Tubosun studied briefly at Moi University, Eldoret, Kenya, in April 2005, as part of a MacArthur Foundation-sponsored Socio-Cultural Exchange Program.

Kola Tubosun founded the Yoruba Names Project in 2015, a lexicography project, to show how technology can help in revitalizing local languages.

Kola Tubosun has written extensively on the need to empower Nigerian languages, and Nigerian English, to function effectively in education, technology, governance, and literature.

Kola Tubosun has engaged in projects in furtherance of these objectives.

Kola Tubosun has worked as a consultant for Oxford English Dictionary since 2018 on Nigerian English and Yoruba entries.

Kola Tubosun worked with BBC Academy to help localize the Journalistic Style Guide of the BBC into Igbo, Yoruba, and Nigerian Pidgin, ahead of its maiden broadcast in those Nigerian languages.

Kola Tubosun has contributed to Nigerian creative writing since 2005, through poetry, travel writing, essay, prose, travel writing and literary criticism.

Kola Tubosun's work has appeared in the International Literary Quarterly, Sentinel Poetry, Brittle Paper, Ake Review, Popula, NTLitMag, and Enkare Review.

Kola Tubosun worked as the pioneering editor of a literary magazine of new writing from Nigeria and Africa called NTLitMag, from 2012 to 2015.

Kola Tubosun has been on the advisory board of the Ake Arts and Book Festival since July 2019.

In 2016, after the illegal demolition of Ilojo Bar, a national monument located on Lagos Island, Kola Tubosun wrote a three-part series in The Guardian investigating the cause and consequences of the demolition on the history of Lagos and Nigeria.

In September 2019, Kola Tubosun co-founded The Brick House Cooperative, with eight other publications with the aim of presenting independent viewpoints from all around the world.

Kola Tubosun became the founding editor-in-chief and publisher of OlongoAfrica, a literary-journalistic platform for new creative writing from Africa.

Kola Tubosun is currently the Africa co-editor of the inaugural edition of the Best Literary Translations Anthology, guest edited by Jane Hirshfield.

Kola Tubosun is a translator of literature from and into Yoruba, his mother tongue, and has argued for more literary translations into African languages as a way of revitalizing the languages.

Kola Tubosun has translated James Baldwin, Wole Soyinka, and Haruki Murakami.

Kola Tubosun's second collection of poetry, Igba Ewe, is a bilingual collection with original Yoruba translations of poetry by American philosopher and poet Emily Grosholz and illustrated by Yemisi Aribisala.

Kola Tubosun has had language-related screen credits on Aisha, a 2022 film written and directed by Frank Berry and starring Letitia Wright and Josh O'Connor; and on Ministry of ungentlemanly warfare, a 2024 directed film by Guy Ritchie.

In January 2016, Kola Tubosun was chosen as a recipient of a Premio Ostana "Special Prize" for Mother Tongue Literature, a prize given to any individual who has done writing and notable advocacy for the defence of an indigenous language.

Kola Tubosun was the first African to be so honoured by the organisation.

Kola Tubosun was the first-ever blogger on the award shortlist.

Kola Tubosun's father Olatubosun Oladapo, was a poet and journalist.

Kola Tubosun's sister, Yemi Adesanya, is an accountant and author.