Ademola Bello

Ademola Bello a Playwright, was born in Ibadan Western Nigeria in 1973, and grew up in the city of Ibadan and Lagos. He worked as a high school teacher and as a journalist in Nigeria. He is a former recipient of Nigeria's distinguished National Youth Service Corps Merit Award for Community Service.

He is currently a student at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

He earned an MFA in Dramatic Writing from prestigious New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where he became the first African student in the department graduate program and he was a Dean's Fellow.

He holds a B.A Hons Degree in African History from University of Ibadan where he was the Editor-in Chief of the University Students' Historical Press.

His play "The Black Cockerel" was produced in June 2009 at Out North Theatre in Anchorage, Alaska with positive review in Anchorage Daily News. The play subsequently, enjoyed impressive staged reading at Mark Taper Forum in Los-Angeles with great cast like Chiwetel Ejiofor, Chad Coleman and Joshua Malina. The play also had a staged reading in December 2009, at New York Theatre Workshop that is currently developing it for production. The latest staged reading of the play was at the New York Public Library.

Mr. Bello had received a Residency to Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference in Waterford, Connecticut. In 2001, he won both the Audience and Panelist Choice Awards at the Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Valdez, Alaska for his play "The Blackguard Prince." His other plays have had staged readings at New York Actors Studio, Lark Play Development Center, and Frederick Loewe's Room.

He was profiled in 2001, alongside Edward Albee, and John Guare, in American Theater journal by late New York Times Cultural Critic Mel Gussow. He has also been profiled on Page A4 of the Anchorage Daily News. Ademola Bello recently, finished a thriller novel titled "A Prisoner from Cell 7" He is a contributor to New York Amsterdam Newspaper, his articles have also been published by Anchorage Press newspaper,RealClearWorld, Encyclopedia Britannica among others. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, and has appeared as a guest on ESPN Outside the Lines.