Jude Idada

Writer

Jude Idada is a winner of the Nigeria Prize for Literature, an AMAA best screenplay award, an AMAA for Best Film by An African in the Diaspora, an AFRIFF Globe best screenplay award, and an ANA prize for Drama alongside several other awards. His films, The Tenant, Queen of the Night and Kofa have won various awards around the world. He has written feature films and television series for various multinational entertainment organizations, like StudioCanal and Amazon Prime. 

He has written and published a collection of short stories “A Box of Chocolates”, an anthology of poetry “Exotica Celestica”, three stage plays “Oduduwa – King of the Edos,” “Sankara” and “L’Otor – The Devils Pilgrimage, the first book in a trilogy of novels “By My Own Hands” and two children’s books “Didi Kanu and the Singing Dwarfs of the North” and “Boom Boom”.  

He is a member of the Nigeria Oscar Selection Committee, the Chair of the Jury of the Coal City Film Festival and was the head judge of the Quramo Writers Prize. Amongst others, Jude was selected as one of the writers for the University of Iowa International Writers Program, the TIFF ‘Adapt This” project, Afrinolly/Ford Foundation ‘Cinema4Change’ project, New Directions Filmmakers of the future project by MNET and the Relativity Media/AFRIFF Filmmaking project. 

His plays have been staged at British Council’s Lagos Theatre Festival, the Lagos Fringe Festival and other cities in North America, South America, and Europe. He has written and directed for stage in Canada, Nigeria, US, and South America and was the Creative Director of the AfriCan Theatre Ensemble in Toronto Canada. 

Jude has been inducted into the National Wall of Role Models at the Black Canadian Awards and founded the Sandra Whiteley Prize for Children’s Literature. He divides his time between Toronto, Canada and Lagos, Nigeria.