ATHENS, Ohio -- World-class novelist Ayi Kwei Armah will lecture on "The Professional Writer in African Society Today" on Tuesday, April 22, at 7 p.m. at Ohio University in the Baker University Center's 1804 Lounge. The lecture is free and open to the public and will be followed by a book signing.

Armah is from Ghana, West Africa and has been writing since the 1960s when he began publishing poems and short stories in magazines in Ghana and the United States. Some of his works are classics being read the world over by students and scholars of many disciplines. His most famous novel is "The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born." His most recent novels "Osiris Rising" and "KMT: in the House of Life," are also generating critical intellectual debate and discussion internationally.

Born in Takoradi, Ghana in 1939, Armah received his secondary education at Achimota College in Ghana and at Groton in Massachusetts. He later earned a degree in sociology at Harvard University and an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University.

He has lived and worked in east, west, north and southern Africa. Armah has been a translator, television scriptwriter, magazine editor and teacher of Expository Prose, Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Massachusetts; Teachers' Colllege, Dar es Salaam; University of Lesotho; University of Wisconsin at Madison; Cornell University and University of California at Berkley.

Armah's lecture is sponsored by the following programs at Ohio University: African Studies, African American Studies, English, Political Science, History, Film, Linguistics, the International Student Union and African Student Union as well as Ohio State University's African Studies and English departments.