Syl Cheney-Coker (right) with Wole Soyinka (who brought him to Las Vegas) during a panel on writers in exile at theUniversity of Nevada, Las Vegas in April 2001.
Educated in the United States, he has a global sense of literary history, and has introduced styles and techniques from French and Latin American literatures to Sierra Leone. He has spent much of his life in exile from his native country, and has written extensively (in poetry, fiction, and non-fiction) about the condition of exile and the view of Africa from an African abroad