Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the author of three novels: Purple Hibiscus(2003), Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), and Americanah (2013); as well as The Thing Around Your Neck, a short story collection (2009). Her work has appeared in many publications, including the New Yorker, the Iowa Review, and Zoetrope.
Early Life
Adichie was born on September 15, 1977 in Enugu State, Nigeria. She is the fifth of six children born to Grace Ifeoma and James Nwoye Adichie. Although her family's ancestral hometown is Abba in Anambra State, Adichie grew up in Nsukka, in a house formerly occupied by fellow Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe. Adichie's father, who is now retired, worked for the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), was Nigeria's first professor of statistics and eventually became Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University. Her mother was the first female registrar at UNN.
Education and Career
Adichie grew up reading Enid Blyton and Nancy Drew mysteries, as well as the works of Chinua Achebe. She completed her secondary education at the University's school, receiving several academic prizes. She went on to study medicine and pharmacy at UNN 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, Adichie left Nigeria for the United States. She gained a scholarship to study communication atDrexel University in Philadelphia for two years, later transferring to Eastern Connecticut State University (Eastern) to pursue a Bachelor's degree in communication and political science. While a student in Connecticut, she stayed with her sister Ijeoma, who runs a medical practice close to Eastern.
Adichie graduated summa cum laude (with the greatest honours) from Eastern in 2001, and then completed a Master's degree in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. She started working on her first novel, Purple Hibiscus, during her senior year at Eastern..The book, which was published by Algonquin Books in October 2003, has received wide critical acclaim: it was shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (now the Women's Prize for Fiction) in 2004 and was awarded the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book (now the Commonwealth Book Prize) in 2005.
Her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun is set before and during the Biafra War. It was published in August 2006 in the United Kingdom and in September 2006 in the United States by Knopf/Anchor.
Adichie's collection of short stories, The Thing around Your Neck, was published in 2009. Her most recent literary project is Americanah (2013) which focuses on the Nigerian immigrant experience in the United States, as well as on love and race. Half of a Yellow Sun has been adapted into a film starring Thandie Newton and Chiwetel Ejiofor and directed by Biyi Bandele.
Adichie was a Hodder Fellow at Princeton University during the 2005-2006 academic years, and earned an MA in African Studies from Yale University in 2008.
Awards and Honours
Adichie won the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction in 2007 for Half of a Yellow Sun and was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2008. In 2010, she was awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Book and PEN Beyond Margins awards. The New Yorker featured her on its list of the twenty best authors under the age of 40 in 2010. She was awarded a 2011-2012 fellowship by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.
Adichie is married to a Maryland-based doctor and divides her time between Nigeria, where she regularly teaches writing workshops, and the United States.
