Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born in Nigeria and grew up in the university town of Nsukka. She briefly studied medicine before coming to the United States at the age of 19 to study communications and political science at Eastern Connecticut State University.
A 2003 O. Henry Prize winner, Adichie was shortlisted for the 2002 Caine Prize for African Writing. Her work has been selected by the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association and the BBC Short Story Awards, and has appeared in various literary publications, including The New Yorker, Zoetrope and the Iowa Review. Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus, was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and longlisted for the Booker. It went on to win the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Adichie's most recent novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, won the 2007 Orange Broadbrand Prize for Fiction.
Adichie now divides her time between the U.S. and Nigeria. She was a 2005-2006 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University and is now a graduate student at Yale University.
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