Richard ALI
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Richard Ali is a Nigerian lawyer, novelist and poet. Author of the warmly received 2012 novel, City of Memories, Richard was Editor-in-Chief of the Sentinel Nigeria Magazine and was a runner-up at the 2008 John la Rose Short Story Competition. He has been Publicity Secretary of the Association of Nigerian Authors (2011 to 2015). A founding member of the Nairobi-based arts collective, Jalada Africa, he also sits on the board of the Babishai Niwe Poetry Foundation, based in Kampala, Uganda, which runs BN Poetry Award—Africa’s only in-Africa continental poetry prize. He has served as a consultant, holding a public policy-shaping role as Technical Assistant to the Honourable Minister of Interior from 2015 to 2017, working on the Ministry Strategy Group (MSG).
He is presently the Director of Engaging Borders SRD—an Open Societies Africa-supported project which works to mainstream “soft approaches” to preventing and countering violent extremism in the Sahel, working in Nigeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Mali, and Kenya, through the use of stories and film.
An avid lover of coffee, he is the visionary behind Tigray Coffee Co, where he serves as Managing Director.
He is also a partner in the Abuja law firm of Asia Ahmed & Co.
Short bio
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In March 2008, Richard was selected amongst 50 other young Nigerian writers to participate in the British Council’s Radiophonics Workshop at Kano, facilitated by Dr. Graham Mort (University of Lancaster). He joined the Sentinel Literary Movement of Nigeria in 2011 and undertook the editorship of fourteen quarterly Sentinel Nigeria Magazine issues. In 2011, at the International Convention of the Association of Nigerian Authors, he was elected as Publicity Secretary [North] and served for four years.
He co-founded Nigeria’s third largest indie publishing company in 2012. Parrésia Publishers Ltd has published well over fifty books under its two main imprints—Parrésia Books and Origami Books. Amongst Parrésia’s authors over the last eight years have been BBC African Performance Prize and Nigeria NLNG Prize winning Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, Nigeria NLNG Prize winning Chika Unigwe as well as the poet, amu nnadi, who won the 2014 Glenna Luschei Prize. A third imprint, Cordite Books, for crime fiction, was edited by award winning George Mason University professor, Helon Habila—who was also a Parrésia Books author.
