Rems Umeasiegbu

Rems left Lagos for a teaching appointment at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where he was a colleague of the renowned writer the late Professor Chinua Achebe. He left the University of Nigeria in 1978, for the Institute of Management Technology, Enugu, where he rose to be the deputy head of the institution. Upon the creation of Anambra State, Umeasiegbu joined the newly formed Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, as one of the pioneer staff of the Department of English Language and Literature. He was made a professor of oral literature in 2001. He retired in 2008. He has served as a visiting professor at the Department of English Language and Literature, Ebonyi State University, Abakaliki, since 2014.

In 1976, at the request of the Nigerian government, Rems returned to Nigeria. He married a school teacher Virginia Okediogwu Anakwenze on 16 October 1976 and they have four children. Back in Nigeria, he worked at the Federal Ministry of Information, Lagos as an information officer with responsibilities for organising the festival of black arts and culture, FESTAC '77.

While in Prague, he wrote his first major work The Way We lived (1969) at the age of 26. The seminal work is a chronicle of folk tales from pre-colonial Nigeria. At Louisiana he wrote the work of fiction Mazi Amesi, a fictional account of an African slave. Throughout his teaching career, Umeasiegbu remained an avid writer, publishing over 35 books in a course of his career which include The Inevitable Aftermath, End of the Road(1985), Anukili Na Ugama: An Igbo Epic, Ask the Storyteller: Tales from Northern Nigeria, Words Are Sweet (1982), The Study of Igbo Culture (1986) and so on . For his artistic output, he was honoured with Distinguished Writers' Award in 1987. The richness of Rems' Ghost Stories in oral literature fascinated a scholar to affirm that: "Umeasiegbu has therefore championed a new literary subgenre in Nigerian literature which is not strictly confined to folktale narrative techniques, but is purely categorized as ghost lore."

Professor Rems attended CKS, Aba, before studying at College of Immaculate Conception, Enugu. In 1966, he proceeded to England for further studies. He later studied in Oxfordshire, England. After spending a year in England, he got a scholarship to study for his Master of Arts at the University of Sedmnact, Listopadu, Prague, Czech Republic in 1971 and another MA at the University of Pennsylvania in 1972. He then later bagged a doctorate degree in Oral Literature from the University of Pennsylvania, the US, in 1975. He moved to the Grambling State University, Louisiana, where he was an assistant professor.

Rems Nnanyelugo Umeasiegbu (born 1 October 1943), is Nigerian professor, scholar, novelist, poet and folklorist from south-eastern Nigeria. . He was also a Principal Lecturer at the Institute of Management Technology, Enugu (1978-1982), and Head of Department, Mass Communications, IMT, Nigeria (1982-1986) and professor of oral literature at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka as well as a consultant to Koruna Books Publications.