Michael Watts

Ed Kashi was born in New York City and received a degree in photojournalism from Syracuse University. Kashi’s first major documentary project, a study of the Protestant community in Northern Ireland, garnered him an NEA grant. His book When The Borders Bleed: The Struggle of the Kurds (Pantheon, 1994) was the result of his cover story for National Geographic. Kashi has received numerous awards, including the World Press and Pictures of the Year competitions. The author of Aging in America: The Years Ahead (powerHouse Books, 2003), Kashi has also published his work in National Geographic, The New York Times Magazine, Time, Fortune, Geo, Smithsonian, Newsweek, Natural History, U.S. News & World Report, The Atlantic Monthly, Audubon, Granta, Aperture, and American Photo, among others. Kashi lives in New Jersey. Michael Watts is Chancellor’s Professor and Director of African Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His writing on the Niger Delta has been widely published, and he received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2001 to conduct research on oil in Nigeria. Wole Soyinka, named the Nobel Laureate for Literature in 1986, is one of the towering figures of world literature and a major figure in both Nigerian politics and the human rights movement. His most recent book is You Must Set Forth at Dawn (Random House, 2006), a memoir on his life during and since the Nigerian civil war. In 2006, he led a delegation of Nobel Laureates to the Niger Delta to publicize conditions across the Nigerian oil field.