Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian, based in the United States, known for her prolific writing of novels, and short stories. Most of her writing is non-fiction.
Biography
She was born to the family of James Nwoye Adichie and Ifeoma Grace Adichie, on 15th September 1977 in Enugu, Enugu State, Nigeria. She is the fifth of six children and was raised in Nsukka in Enugu State. Her father was a professor of statistics at the University of Nigeria while her mother was the female registrar at the same university. She hails from Abba in Anambra State.
Family
She is married to Ivara Esege, a Nigerian Doctor in 2009 and the marriage is blessed with one daughter who was born in 2016.
Education
She went to the University of Nigeria Secondary School, Nsukka and received a lot of academic awards. After her secondary education, she spent a year and a half studying Medicine and Pharmacy at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN). When she turned 19 years, she left Nigeria to study Communications and Political Science at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She eventually relocated to be near her sister who was having medical practice in Coventry, Connecticut and she received her Bachelor’s degree from Eastern Connecticut State University.
She went for her Master’s degree in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University and graduated in 2003. In 2008, she got her Master of Arts degree in African studies from Yale University.
Professions
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a writer by profession and has written many books. She is a Poet, author, novelist, and writer of poems, novels, and short stories. He worked as an Editor for The Compass magazine, a magazine owned by the University of Nigeria’s Catholic medical students. In April 2014, she was named one of the 39 writers under the age of 40 years in the Hay Festival and Rainbow Book Club project.
Books Written
- Collection of poems (Decisions) – 1997
- Play (For Love of Biafra) – 1998
- Purple Hibiscus – 2003
- Half of a Yellow Sun – 2006
- The Thing Around Your Neck – 2009
- Americanah – 2013
- Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions – 2017
- Zikora – 2020
Awards
She has the following awards:
- David T. Wong International Short Story Prize in 2002/2003
- International Nonino Prize in 2009
- Award of MacArthur Fellowship in 2008
- 2011 – 2012 Fellowship by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.
- Sixteen honorary doctorate degrees from the notable world’s best universities.
- Doctor of Humane Letters by Johns Hopkins University in 2016
- Doctor of Humane Letters by Haverford College in 2017
- Doctor of Humane Letters from Amherst College in 2018
- PEN Pinter Prize in 2018
- Doctor Honoris Causa from the Universite de Fribourg, Switzerland in 2019
- Honorary Degree from Yale University in 2019
- Honorary Doctorate Degree from the Catholic University of Louvain in 2022
Big talk
In ted talk, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talked about the danger of a single story. She disclosed how she found her genuine cultural voice and warned that if one hears only one side of a story about a country or another person, he or she is at risk of critical misunderstanding.