Kojo Laing

Novelist and poet Kojo Laing was born in Kumasi, Ghana. He earned a diploma in management from the College of Management, Ghana; a certificate in rural management from Birmingham University, England; and an MA in political science and history from Glasgow University, Scotland. His books include the novels Big Bishop Roko and the Altar Gangsters (2006), Major Gentl and the Achimota Wars (1992), Search Sweet Country (1988), and Women of the Aeroplanes (1988), and the poetry collection Godhorse (1989). In 2012, McSweeney’s reissued Search Sweet Country, with an introduction by Kenyan author and journalist Binyavanga Wainaina.

Occasionally drawing on the techniques of surrealism, Laing’s poetry addresses themes of alienation and identity. His novels likewise combine the real and supernatural, often in international settings. Laing received the National Poetry Prize Valco Award in 1976 and the National Novel Prize from the Ghana Association of Writers in 1985. In 2010 he traveled to Cape Town to write for Pilgrimages, a program sponsored by the Chinua Achebe Center for African Writers and Artists to foster writing about Africa during the 2010 World Cup.
 
Laing worked as headmaster in a school in Accra, the secretary to the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, and chief executive of Family Schools in Accra. He died in Ghana on April 20, 2017.