Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is an award-winning novelist and short story writer whose work has been translated into 30 languages and has appeared in various publications, including The New Yorker, Granta, The O. Henry Prize Stories, the Financial Times, and Zoetrope.
Education
- 2001 Received a bachelor’s degree in communication and political science from Eastern Connecticut State University.
- 2003 Completed a master’s degree from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.
- 2008 Received a second master’s degree—this one in African studies—from Yale University.
Books
- Purple Hibiscus
- Half of a Yellow Sun
- The Thing Around Your Neck
- Americanah
Awards
(a sampling)
- Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award 2013 (fiction category), for Americanah
- Listed among the 100 Most Influential Africans 2013, New African
- Listed among the Ten Best Books of 2013, The New York Times Book Review, for Americanah
- 2013 Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize (fiction category), for Americanah
- Listed among The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40, 2010
- 2009 International Nonino Prize
- Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2007, for Half of a Yellow Sun
- Commonwealth Writers’ Prize 2005: Best First Book (overall), for Purple Hibiscus
- Hurston/Wright Legacy Award 2004 (Best Debut Fiction Category), for Purple Hibiscus
- O. Henry Prize 2003, for “The American Embassy”
In Her Own Words
“I urge you to try and create the world you want to live in … Minister to the world in a way that can change it. Minister radically in a real, active, practical, get-your-hands-dirty way.”
Commencement speech, Wellesley College, 2015
“I write from real life. I am an unrepentant eavesdropper and a collector of stories. I record bits of overheard dialogue. I ask questions. I watch the world.”
from The Guardian, 2013
“For me, success means you’re in a place where you feel like yourself, you’re doing what you love, but there’s so much more. I don’t think I’m ever going to get to the place where I’m complacent.”
Huffington Post interview, 2014
