Meshack Asare (born 1945) is a popular African children's author. He was born in

Ghana Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It is situated along the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and shares borders with Côte d’Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Togo to t ...

and currently resides in

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. On 15 July 2014, he was announced as a finalist for the prestigious international award, the 2015 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's Literature, which he won on 24 October 2014, becoming the first African to receive the award. ''The Brassman's Secret'' was his representative text read by the nominating jury, and the award honors his entire body of work.

Life

Meshack Asare was born 18 September 1945 in Nyankumasi, Ghana. His mother Agatha Adoma Afram was a trader and his father Joseph K. Asare was an accountant. Asare was the second of six children. Asare studied Fine Arts at the College of Art in

Kumasi Kumasi is a city and the capital of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly and the Ashanti Region of Ghana. It is the second largest city in the country, with a population of 443,981 as of the 2021 census. Kumasi is located in a rain forest region ...

, and between 1967 and 1979 he was a teacher in Ghana.Maureen Abotsi
"Meshack Asare"
Ghana Nation, 13 September 2013. During this time he began to write and illustrate children's books, including the much translated ''Tawia Goes to Sea'', which received the Ghana National Book Award and the

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citation "Best picture book from Africa". After a period of ten years during which he did not publish any work, Asare returned in 1981 with a new book, ''The Brassman's Secret'', which was translated into many languages, and won the

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in 1982 as the best book published in Africa in the preceding year. Many further successes followed. In 1984, Asare's ''Cat in Search of a Friend'' won the Austrian National Prize (1985) and a BIB Golden Plaque at the Bratislava Biennale (1995). Asare studied for a M.A. degree in Social Anthropology at the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...

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, and since 1993 he was based in London, while frequently travelling throughout to Africa, looking to experience as many African cultures as possible so as to represent them in his works. His book ''Sosu's Call'' was the winner of the 1999

First Prize for Children's and Young People's Literature in the Service of Tolerance.

Selected bibliography

Children's literature

*''Noma's Sand: A Tale from Lesotho'' (Sub-Saharan Publishers, 2002) *''Meliga's Day'' (Sub-Saharan Publishers, 2000) *''Nana's Son'' (Sub-Saharan Publishers, 2000) *''Sosu's Call'' (Sub-Saharan Publishers, 1997) *''The Magic Goat'' (Sub-Saharan Publishers, 1997) *''Halima'' (Macmillan, 1992) *''Cat in Search of a Friend'' (Austria: Jungbrunnen, 1984) *''Chipo and the Bird on the Hill: A tale of ancient Zimbabwe'' (Zimbabwe Publishing House, 1984) *''The Brassman's Secret'' (Education Press, 1981) *''Tawia Goes to Sea'' (Ghana Publishers, 1970) *''Mansa Helps at Home'' (Ghana Publishers, 1969) *''I Am Kofi'' (Ghana Publishers, 1968)

Short stories

*''Bury My Bones but Keep My Words: African tales for retelling'' (HarperCollins, 1991)

References

External links

* Dennis Abrams
"Exploring the African Continent in Children’s Books"
Publishing Perspectives, 29 October 2014. * Nadja Borovac
"Writers Changing Lives: A Chat With Meshack Asare"
The Literacy Ledger, 29 April 2011.
Meshack Asare biography
"Meet the poets", Barbican. {{DEFAULTSORT:Asare, Meshack 1945 births Ghanaian children's writers Living people