In recognition of her immense contribution to African Literature, the Pan African Writers Association (PAWA), has awarded the President, World Organization Of Writers ( WOW) Ms Margarita Al with the PAWA Patron of the Arts Medal.
The event which took place at the recently concluded Second Congress of WOW in Moscow, Russia was witnessed by delegates from more than 80 countries.
Above picture shows the PAWA President, Professor Bill Ndi about to decorate Ms Margarita Al with the medal. Looking on is the PAWA Secretary General, Dr Wale Okediran.
The medal has prominent engraved portraits of Naguib Mahfouz, the Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature, John M. Coetzee, the South African–Australian novelist, essayist, linguist, translator and recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Literature, Chinua Achebe, the Nigerian novelist, poet, and critic who is regarded as the dominant figure of modern African literature, Nadine Gordimer, the South African writer and political activist who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991, Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist who was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, Salim Ahmed Salim, the Tanzanian politician and diplomat who has worked in the international diplomatic arena since the early 1960s, Festus Iyayi, the Nigerian leftist writer, best known for advancing his politics through realist novels depicting, Mamadou Traoré Diop, the example of a poet involved in all liberation struggles in Africa, Omar Salem, the Arab poet and diplomat, and Daniel Francis Kweipe Annan, the speaker of the Parliament of Ghana.
