BIOgraphy

Nnedi Okorafor 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 the winner of the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature, shortlisted for the Parallax Award and Kindred Award, a finalist for the Golden Duck and Garden State Teen Choice awards and nominated for a Locus Award (Best First Novel). 

Nnedi Okorafor and Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka at the Wole Soyinka Prize ceremony in Lagos, Nigeria.

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 Her winning unpublished children's book, Long Juju Man,  a story about a girl's encounters with an irritating crafty ghost, will be published by Macmillan UK in 2008.

 Her forthcoming young adult novel, tentatively titled Sunny and the Leopard People (Fall 2010, Penguin), is about teenage albino Nigerian girl who learns that she is part of a secret magical society. Her forthcoming adult novel, Who Fears Death? (DAW Books, early 2010), is a dark, gritty  novel that evenly combined the subject matter of African literature and fantasy/science fiction.

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, 2008), "Spider the Artist" (The Seeds of Change Anthology, edited by John Joseph Adams, 2008), From the Lost Diary of Treefrog7 (Clarkesworld Magazine, 2009) and" On the Road" (Eclipse 3, forthcoming in 2009).

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

Learn more about Nnedi's daughter, Anyaugo Okorafor, and her nephew Dika Chidume.

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