Biography of Professor Wole Soyinka Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka Hon. FRSL (Yoruba: Aknwándé Olwlé Babátndé óyinká; born 13 July ), also known as Wole Soyinka, is a Nigerian playwright, writer, poet, and essayist in English. He was the first Sub-Saharan African to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature in for “fashioning the drama of existence in a wide cultural.