| BIOgraphy
Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu was born in the United
States to two Igbo (Nigerian) immigrant parents. She holds a PhD in English and
is a professor at Chicago State University. She resides in the
suburbs of Chicago with her daughter
Anyaugo.
Though American-born, Nnedi's muse is Nigeria. Her parents began taking her and her siblings to visit relatives there when she was very young. Because Nigeria is her muse, this is where
many of her stories take place, either literally or figuratively.
Because she grew up wanting to be an
entomologist and even after becoming a writer maintained that
love of insects and nature, her work is always filled with
startlingly vivid flora and fauna.
And because Octavia Butler, Stephen King,
Philip Pullman, Tove Jansson, Hayao Miyazaki, and Ngugi wa
Thiong'o are her greatest influences, her work tends to be...on
the creative side.
Her first novel,
Zahrah the Windseeker (published in 2005 by Houghton Mifflin and an illustrated version
was published in Nigeria in 2008 by
Kachifo Ltd.), takes place in a highly technological world based on Nigerian myths and culture.
Zahrah the Windseeker
was shortlisted
for the Parallax Award and Kindred Award in 2006, a finalist for
the 2005 Golden Duck and GardenState Teen Choice awards and
nominated for a Locus Award (Best First Novel) 2005.
Her second novel,
The Shadow Speaker
(Hyperion Books, 2007) has characters from and takes place in the countries of Niger and Nigeria.
The Shadow Speaker was a Booksense Pick for Winter
2007/08 and a finalist for the Essence Magazine Literary Award
and the
Andre Norton Award. It
is also an NAACP Image Award
nominee, a
Tiptree Honor Book and a
Locus Magazine Recommended Book.
Nnedi is the winner of the 2007/08
Macmillan Writer's
Prize for Africa. Her winning unpublished children's book,
Long Juju Man, a story about a girl's
encounters with an irritating crafty ghost, will be published by
Macmillan UK in 2008.
Nnedi has had several short stories published and win awards. Her short story, How Inyang Got Her Wings (to be published by Gallery Seven Books) is about a young Efik girl with amazing powers in a remote southeastern Nigerian village. It was shortlisted for the 2006 Olaudah Equiano Prize for Fiction. Her award winning short story
Biafra was a magical story about Nigeria 's Civil War which took place in the late 60s.
The Popular Mechanic (to be published by InterNova in 2007) is a story that touches on a very serious problem in Nigeria today: Oil. Over 80 percent of the country's revenue comes from oil sales. Nigeria is American's 5th largest oil supplier. Yet, Nigerians continue to suffer from shortages of gasoline and the country's most oil rich areas are some of the most poverty stricken places in the world. Who wouldn't set a story in this quagmire?
Nnedi also wrote the critical essay, Stephan King's Super Duper Magical Negroes, which published in Strange Horizons in October 2004. The essay was the first place winner of the 2005 Strange Horizons Reader's Choice Award for non-fiction. Her short story, the Magical Negro, originally published in Dark Matter: Reading the Bones, was a finalist for the 2005 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.
Her short story, The Awakening, was 2003's winner of the Chicago Bar Association Goodnow Entertainment Award. Windseekers , a fantasy story based on Nigerian myth and culture, was a finalist in the 2002 Writers of the Future Contest and was published in the Writers of the Future Anthology XVIII. In 2001, Nnedi won third place in the 2001 Hurston/Wright Awards for her story Amphibious Green and received an honorable mention in The Year's Best Horror and Fantasy (14th Ed) for The Palm Tree Bandit (originally published in Strange Horizons).
Nnedi's latest short stories include
The Albino Girl (a bestselling Amazon Short published by
Amazon.com) and Spider the Artist (to be published in
The Seeds of Change Anthology, edited by
John Joseph Adams in August 2008).
Her first full-length play, Full Moon, (directed by A. Damani Harris ) was produced by the Buxville Theater Company at the Chopin Theatre in Chicago in 2005. And she is currently working on a screenplay titled Passion Fruit: An Urban Fairy Tale.
Nnedi earned her BA in Rhetoric from the
University of Illinois, C-U. Her MA in journalism from Michigan
State University. And her MA and PhD in English at the
University of Illinois , Chicago. She is also a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop (2001).
Literary Agents:
Donald Maass of the
Donald Maass Literary Agency
Janell Walden Agyeman of Marie Brown & Associates
Other publications:
Short Fiction:
"Spider the Artist," Seeds of Change
(Prime Books) 2008
"How Inyang Got Her Wings," Gallery Seven Books Anthology (Gallery Seven Books) 2008
"The Chaos Magician's Mega Chemistry Set," Space and Time Magazine (Space and Time Publishing) 2007
"The Red Queen," Black Arts Quarterly, (Stanford University) 2007
"The Winds of Harmattan," Black Arts Quarterly, (Stanford University) 2005
"The Flooded Forest," Sea of Voices , Isle of Stories Anthology, 2004
"When Scarabs Multiply," So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy, (Arsenal Pulp Press) 2004
"Asuquo," Mojo Conjure Stories, (Warner Aspect) 2003
Non-fiction
"Of Course People Can Fly", Afro-Future Females,
(Ohio State University Press) 2008
"The Default", The Wiscon Chronicles, (Aquaduct
Press) 2008
"bulter8star@qwest.net", Strange Matings:
Remembering Octavia Butler (Wesleyan University Press) 2008
"Wizard of the Crow: Ngugi wa Thiong'o", interview, Farafina Magazine, 2006
"Lioness of Sudan: Kola Boof", magazine profile, Farafina Magazine, 2006
"Stephen King's Super Duper Magical Negroes", critical essay, Strange Horizons, 2004
"Running Girl", memoir, Under Her Skin: An Anthology on Race and Childhood (Seal Press), 2004
"Her Pen Could Fly: A Tribute to Virginia Hamilton", essay, Dark Matter II: Reading the Bones, (Warner Aspect), 2004
RESUME
ANYAUGO & DIKA
Learn more about Nnedi's daughter, Anyaugo
Okorafor-Mbachu, and her nephew
Dika Chidume.
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