Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie a renowned Nigerian novelist was born in
Nigeria in 1977. She grew up in the university town of Nsukka, Enugu
State where she attended primary and secondary schools, and briefly
studied Medicine and Pharmacy. She then moved to the United States to
attend college, graduating summa cum laude from Eastern Connecticut
State University with a major in Communication and a minor in Political
Science. She holds a Masters degree in Creative Writing from Johns
Hopkins and a Masters degree in African Studies from Yale University.
She was a 2005-2006 Hodder Fellow at Princeton, where she taught
introductory fiction. Chimamanda is the author of Half of a Yellow Sun,
which won the 2007 Orange Prize For Fiction; and Purple Hibiscus, which
won the 2005 Best First Book Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the 2004
Debut Fiction Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. In 2009, her collection of
short stories, The Thing around Your Neck was published. She was named
one of the twenty most important fiction writers today under 40 years
old by The New Yorker and was recently the guest speaker at the 2012
annual commonwealth lecture. She featured in the April 2012 edition of
Time Magazine, celebrated as one of the 100 Most Influential People in
the World. She currently divides her time between the United States and
Nigeria.
