07 Feb 2021

Nnedi Okorafor

Black Authors post, Day 7.

Black Authors post, Day 7.

Today’s author is science fiction writer Nnedi Okorafor.

Nnedi was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1974. Her parents are Igbo Nigerian, and they came to the United States to attend school, but we’re unable to return because of the Nigerian Civil War. Nnedi was an athletic teenager, winning titles for track and tennis in high school. She was gifted in math and science, and planned to become an entomologist.

Due to severe scoliosis, Nnedi underwent spinal fusion surgery at 19. Complications from surgery left her unable to walk for many months. During her illness, she took to writing stories in the margins of a science fiction book. After she recovered, she began a creative writing class.

Nnedi earned a BA at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a master’s degree in journalism from Michigan State University and a master’s degree and PhD in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

After graduating from Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop at UCSD workshop in 2001, Nnedi began her professional writing career by publishing short stories. She then published her two first novels for young adults, The Shadow Speaker and Zahrah the Windseeker. She published her first adult novel, Who Fears Death, in 2010.

Nnedi’s many short stories, novellas, and novels have won many awards, including the Kindred Award, the Carl Brandon Society Parallax Award, the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa, the World Fantasy Award, the Nebula Award, and the Hugo Award.

Nnedi currently lives in Olympia Fields, Illinois with her family.

Links to some of my favorite books by Nnedi:

A note: These Amazon links point to Amazon Smile, Amazon’s affiliate charity program. If you have not set up Amazon Smile, I encourage you to point it to an organization like YWCA Minneapolis, which promotes health, wellness, and gender and racial equity in the Twin Cities area.

Some links:

Image by Cheetah Witch - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64927660