Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Adichie, Lagos 2009
Born	Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie September 15, 1977 (1977-09-15) (age 34) Enugu, Enugu State, Nigeria
Nationality	Nigerian
Ethnicity	Igbo
Period	2003-present
Notable work(s)	Purple Hibiscus Half of a Yellow Sun
Influences Enid Blyton, Chinua Achebe, VS Naipaul

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (born September 15, 1977) is a Nigerian writer.

Her family is of Igbo descent.^[1] In 2008 she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.

Early life and education

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born on 15 September 1977 in Enugu, Nigeria, the fifth of six children to Igbo parents, Grace Ifeoma and James Nwoye Adichie. While the family's ancestral hometown is Abba in Anambra State, Chimamanda grew up in Nsukka, in the house formerly occupied by Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe. Chimamanda's father, who is now retired, worked at the University of Nigeria, located in Nsukka. He was Nigeria's first professor of statistics, and later became Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University. Her mother was the first female registrar at the same institution. Chimamanda completed her secondary education at the University's school, receiving several academic prizes. She went on to study medicine and pharmacy at the University of Nigeria for a year and a half. During this period, she edited The Compass, a magazine run by the University's Catholic medical students.

At the age of nineteen, Chimamanda left for the United States. She gained a scholarship to study communication at Drexel University in Philadelphia for two years, and she went on to pursue a degree in communication and political science at Eastern Connecticut State University. While in Connecticut, she stayed with her sister Ijeoma, who runs a medical practice close to the university.

Chimamanda graduated summa cum laude from Eastern in 2001, and then completed a master's degree in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore and a masters degree in African Studies from Yale University.

Career

Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus was released in October 2003. The book has received wide critical acclaim: it was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction (2004) and was awarded the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book (2005).

Her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun (also the title of one of her short stories), is set before and during the Biafran War. It was published in August 2006 in the United Kingdom and in September 2006 in the United States. Like Purple Hibiscus, it has also been released in Nigeria.

Chimamanda was a Hodder fellow at Princeton University during the 2005-2006 academic year.

Her collection of short stories, The Thing around Your Neck, was published in 2009. Chimamanda says her next major literary project will focus on the Nigerian immigrant experience in the United States.

Chimamanda is now married and divides her time between Nigeria, where she regularly teaches writing workshops, and the United States. She has recently been awarded a 2011-2012 fellowship by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.

References

1. ^ Nixon, Rob (October 1, 2006). "A Biafran Story". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/books/review/Nixon.t.html. Retrieved 25 Jan 2009. "Adichie may not have lived through the civil war, but her imagination seems to have been profoundly molded by it: some of her own Igbo family survived Biafra; others did not." 

External links

• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, "Quality Street", Guernica Magazine
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Reading, Southbank Centre, London, April 2009
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, "Half of a Yellow Sun", Literary Potpourri
• "Orange Prize Shortlist", The Guardian
• The Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Website (Unofficial)
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at the Internet Book List
• Yale Biographical Information on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• "The new face of Nigerian literature?"
• Chimamanda Adichie speaks at TED: "The Danger of a Single Story", July 2009
• Audio: Chimanda Adichie, on The Forum, BBC World Service discussion
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's articles, 5th Estate blog

Persondata
Name	Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	September 15, 1977
Place of birth	Enugu, Enugu State, Nigeria
Date of death
Place of death