Professor Yulisa Amadu Pat Maddy was born on December 27 th , 1936 in Freetown,
Sierra Leone, where he grew up and was educated (attending St. Edward’s Secondary School)
until the age of 22. In 1958 he travelled to France and then Britain. Maddy trained at the Rose
Bruford College of Speech and Drama in the UK, and started broadcasting in Britain and
Denmark, writing and producing radio plays. He was Director of Drama at the Keskidee Centre
in London. Maddy’s early plays, initially produced on the BBC African Service, were published
as Obasai and Other Plays (1968). In the mid-1960s he lived in Denmark, where a book of his
poetry, Ny afrikansk prosa, was published (1969).
On his return to Sierra Leone in 1968 he became Head of Drama on Radio Sierra Leone.
He was a founder-director of the theatre company Gbakanda Afrikan Tiata, founded 1969 in
Freetown. He subsequently worked in Zambia, where he directed the national dance troupe and
trained them for the Montreal World’s Fair in 1970. He also taught drama in Nigeria, at the
University of Ibadan and the University of Ilorin, [4] and in the United States.
His first novel, No Past, No Present, No Future, explored the dynamics of a group of
three friends, (including, controversially, at the time, one gay man), growing up in colonial West
Africa and their physical, psychological and emotional journeys to Europe. It was published in
1973, to great acclaim in the Heinemann African Writers Series, where his writing continued to
develop. His writing, which is often challenging and confrontational, has been broadcast by the
BBC and published internationally. However the uncompromising honesty of his writing,
particularly in his views on the social and political inequalities in Africa, led to his political
imprisonment in Sierra Leone. Upon his release, he was forced to leave the country and become
a political exile.
He received a Sierra Leone National Arts Festival Award in 1973, a Gulbenkian Grant
from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in 1978, and in 1979 an Edinburgh Festival Award.
He has also received the distinction of being commemorated in a special stained-glass window of
the Pride Library in Canada, as one of 135 writers, including William Shakespeare, Federico
Garcia Lorca, W. H. Auden and others who have been acknowledged for their outstanding
contribution to literature.
In 2007, Maddy returned to Sierra Leone to continue his academic research of exploring
and developing Sierra Leone’s cultural heritage; providing inspiration and opportunities to a new
generation of artists and performers; and continuing to give a “voice to the voiceless” through the
work of his Gbakanda Foundation. After a long period of illness, he died on March 16 th , 2014 in
Freetown, Sierra Leone.
He is survived by: his wife Mrs Abibatu Maddy; his children: Victoria Ebu (Walter)
Hotobah-During, Robin Maddy, Nadia Maddy, Sheku Kamara, Ulisses (Arita) Maddy, Amiee
Kamara, Amadu (Kathryn) Maddy; grandchildren: Zubida, Desham, Abi, Akir, Zharia, Mekai,
Jahkobi, Jaden, Messiah, Kai, Samir, Jaiden and great granddaughter: Sa’Nya
Works
Alla Gbah [The Big Man], 1967
Yon Kon [Clever Thief], 1968. Reprinted in Cosmo Pieterse, ed., Ten One-Act Plays,
Heinemann, 1968. African Writers Series 34.
Obasai [Over Yonder], 1971. Reprinted in Obasai and Other Plays, Heinemann, 1968.
African Writers Series 89.
Ghana Bendu [Tough Guy], 1971
Life Everlasting, 1972. Reprinted in Cosmo Pieterse, ed., Short African Plays,
Heinemann, 1972. African Writers Series 78.
No Past, No Present, No Future (novel), London: Heinemann Educational, 1973. African
Writers Series 137.
If Wishes Were Horses (radio play), 1973
Big Breeze Blow, produced Freetown, 1974
Take Tem Draw Di Rope, Freetown, 1975
Naw We Yone Dehn See, 1975
Put for Me, produced Freetown, 1975
Big Berrin (Big Burying), Freetown, 1976
Saturday Night Out (television play), 1980
A Journey Into Christmas, 1980
Drums, Voices and Words, 1985
(with Donnarae MacCann) African Images in Juvenile Literature: commentaries on
neocolonialist fiction, Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1996
(with Donnarae MacCann) Neo-imperialism in Children’s Literature about Africa: a
study of contemporary fiction, New York: Routledge, 2009.