Eyoh Asuquo Etim is a novelist, poet and lecturer at Akwa Ibom State University, Obio Akpa, Nigeria. He has a PhD in African Literature and Criticism from the University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria. Among his published works are Past Echoes (novella, 2005), He Repented Again (Novella, 2006), Missed Calls (Novella, 2007), The Infantist Manifesto (Literary Criticism, 2008), Alien Citizens (Novel, 2012), Songs of our Time (Poetry, 2013), Don’t Marry Angelica (Novella, 2014), Virtual Chants (Poetry, 2020) and Afro Rococo (Poetry, 2022).

Born on Tuesday the 29th of March 1983, Dr Eyoh Etim hails from Ikot Etim Ntung in Atabong Clan, Okobo Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. He was, however, mostly raised in Ekpene Ukim in Uruan Local Government Area and in Bekumu, Cameroon, where his late father plied his trade as an entrepreneur: a fisherman and later a merchant. He attended Government Primary School, Bekumu, Cameroon, and St Thomas’ R.C.M School, Ekpene Ukim, where he obtained his First School Leaving Certificate (FSLC) in 1995 at Merit Level.

Eyoh Etim obtained his Secondary School Certificate from Adiaha Obong Secondary School, Ekpene Ukim in 2001. He taught briefly at Uduak Abasi Nursery and Primary School, Ituk Mbang, Uruan, before gaining admission to study English at the University of Uyo, Uyo, Nigeria, in 2003. His undergraduate research project was entitled ‘The Politics of Survival in Naguib Mahfouz’s Children of Gebelawi and Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero. He graduated with Second Class Upper Division in 2008 and served as a Youth Corps member teaching English and Literature at Akanu Ibiam Grammar School, Afikpo, Ebonyi State, from 2008 to 2009. 

While studying for his Master’s degree, Eyoh Etim taught English and Literature at Royal Pearls College (now defunct), Shelter Afrique, Uyo, Akwa Ibom State. He has also taught at Pegasus High School, Eket, where he taught Literature to WAEC and IGCSE candidates. Eyoh Etim completed his Master of Arts degree in English Literature from the University of Uyo, Uyo, in 2012. His dissertation was entitled, ‘Physics in Literary Imagination: An Interdisciplinary Study of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera.

 Eyoh Etim joined the Department of English, Uniuyo, as a Part-time lecturer the same year he completed his Master’s. In 2013, Eyoh Etim got a full-time appointment as a lecturer in the Department of English, Akwa Ibom State University, where he currently teaches. In 2021, Eyoh Etim completed his PhD in African Literature and Criticism at the University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria. His thesis was entitled, ‘Leadership Failure and the Historicity of Selected Postcolonial Malawian Prose Narratives’.

Apart from his creative and imaginative works, Dr Eyoh Etim has published scholarly articles in high impact journals. Some of these articles are ‘Memoir and Rememory: Remembering Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda in Jack Mapanje’s And Crocodiles Are Hungry at Night’ published by Journal for Cultural Research in 2020; ‘Herstory’ Versus ‘History’: A Motherist Rememory in Akachi Ezeigbo’s The Last of the Strong Ones and Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun’ published by Cogent Arts and Humanities in 2020; and ‘The Centre Replies the Empire: Post-postcolonial Perspectives on the Historicity of Post-independence Malawian Leadership in Paul Theroux’s The Lower River’ co-authored with Professor Emmanuel Omobowale and published by Hybrid Journal of Literary and Cultural Studies in 2020.   

Eyoh Etim has attended academic conferences both local and international, including the Fourth Postcolonial Narrations Conference in 2016 in Munich, Germany, and the Third Memory Studies Conference held in Madrid, Spain, in 2019. In 2023, Eyoh Etim won a two-month research fellowship at Newcastle University, the United Kingdom, sponsored by the Gerda Henkel Foundation in conjunction with the Memory Studies Association (MSA), where he studied the effects of dictatorship on women and children in selected Nazi and Malawian literary texts.

In October, 2023, Eyoh Etim won the coveted NLNG Prize for Literary Criticism worth 10,000 USD. The NLNG Prize for Literary Criticism is the highest prize for literary criticism in Nigeria. The paper that won the award is entitled ‘Herstory’ Versus ‘History’: A Motherist Rememory in Akachi Ezeigbo’s The Last of the Strong Ones and Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun’ published by Cogent Arts and Humanities. The paper emerged winner out of the thirteen submissions sent in for the prize. While announcing the award at the Expo Centre, Eko Hotels and Suites, Lagos, Professor Olu Obafemi decribed Eyoh Etim’s research outputs as ‘excellent’ and ‘original’ with ‘detailed and appropriate application’ of research concepts.

Dr Eyoh Etim teaches Use of English, Introduction to Poetry, Nigerian Literature, African Poetry, The African Novel, Survey of English Literature, Gender Studies, Creative Writing, Critical Approaches to Literature, Elizabethan Literature and Protest Literature in the Department of English, Akwa Ibom State University as a Full-Time Lecturer.

Dr Eyoh Etim runs a literary blog (eyohetim.com), which he uses to promote Nigerian works and to interpret extant literary texts recommended by WAEC, NECO, JAMB, JUPEB and IGCSE for students in schools and colleges. Dr Etim has a vision to establish a literary magazine to discourse the emerging issues in Nigerian and African Literature, among other projects. 

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