Background

Nnedi Okorafor was born on April 8, 1974, in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. She is the daughter of immigrants from Nigeria. From her childhood, she, her parents, brothers, and sisters regularly visited relatives in Nigeria. These memories from her childhood had a great influence on the formation of Nnedi’s writing.

Education

During her years attending Homewood-Flossmoor High School in Flossmoor, Illinois, Okorafor was nationally-known tennis and track star and excelled in math and the sciences. Due to her interest in insects, she desired to be an entomologist.

Okorafor studied at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1996. In 1999 she received a Master of Arts degree in journalism at Michigan State University. She also has a Master of Arts degree in English literature and a Doctor of Philosophy degree (2007) in creative writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Okorafor is also a 2001 graduate of the Clarion Writers Workshop in Lansing, Michigan.

Career

Nnedi Okorafor began publishing with The Palm Tree Bandit in 2000. From the very beginning, her work has interwoven traditional science fiction topoi with African story-modes, in what might be described as a series of explorations in lateral Equipoise, where genres do not mate within a culture but across borders. Her short stories have been published in anthologies and magazines, including Dark Matter: Reading The Bones, Enkare Review, Strange Horizons, Moondance magazine, and Writers of the Future Volume XVIII. Hereafter a collection of her stories, titled Kabu Kabu, was published. It includes the titular piece, co-authored by Alan Dean Foster, and six other previously unpublished short stories, as well as stories that had been previously published in other venues since 2001, and a foreword by Whoopi Goldberg.

In 2005 Okorafor published a novel Zahrah the Windseeker for a young adult as Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, in 2007 - The Shadow Speaker. Also in 2005 Okorafor wrote and published her first play, Full Moon. The Buxville Theater Company in Chicago helped produce this full-length theatrical work.

Her first adult novel Who Fears Death was published in 2010. Next year Okorafor returned to a young adult with Akata Witch. The Binti trilogy began with a 2015 novella, Binti. This was followed by Binti: Home, published in 2017, and Binti: The Night Masquerade, published in 2018.

Okorafor's book Who Fears Death was picked up by HBO to become a TV series with novelist and Game of Thrones producer, George R.R. Martin, joining the project as an executive producer. Okorafor will remain involved with the project as a consultant. And the story Hello, Moto was adapted into a short film, titled Hello, Rain by filmmaker, C. J. Obasi. Her latest book is Broken Places & Outer Spaces: Finding Creativity in the Unexpected.

Now Nnedi is a professor of creative writing and literature at the University of Buffalo.

Achievements

• Nnedi Okorafor has been a finalist for the Essence Magazine Literary Award, Tiptree Award, a British Science Fiction Association Award and the Theodore Sturgeon Award. She was also a nominee for the NAACP Imagine Award. Her books are translated into various languages.
  
  

Works

More photos

• book

  • Broken Places & Outer Spaces: Finding Creativity in the Unexpected

    (In Broken Places & Outer Spaces, Nnedi takes the reader o...)

    2019
  • Binti

    (Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba peop...)

    2015
  • Lagoon

    (After word gets out on the Internet that aliens have land...)

    2014
  • Who Fears Death

    (In a post-apocalyptic Africa, the world has changed in ma...)

    2010
  • Zahrah the Windseeker

    (In the Ooni Kingdom, children born dada with vines growin...)

    2005
  • Akata Warrior

    (A year ago, Sunny Nwazue, an American-born girl Nigerian ...)

    2017
  • Akata Witch

    (Akata Witch weaves together a heart-pounding tale of magi...)

    2011
  • Binti: The Night Masquerade

    (Binti has returned to her home planet, believing that the...)

    2018
  • Kabu Kabu

    (Kabu Kabu, unregistered illegal Nigerian taxis, generally...)

    2013
  • The Book of Phoenix

    (Phoenix was grown and raised among other genetic experime...)

    2005
  • The Shadow Speaker

    (Ejimafor "Ejii" Ugabe is a fourteen-year-old Muslim half ...)

    2007
  • Long Juju Man

    (Ngoli has heard many stories about Long Juju Man from her...)

    2009
  • Binti 2: Home

    (It’s been a year since Binti and Okwu enrolled at Oomza U...)

    2017
  • Hello, Moto

    (There is witchcraft in science and a science to witchcraf...)

    2011

Views

Okorafor refers to herself as "Nigamerican". Okorafor's novels and stories reflect both her West African heritage and her American life. Her stories, which are often set in West Africa, use the framework of fantasy to explore weighty social issues: racial and gender inequality, political violence, the destruction of the environment, genocide and corruption. Her works place black girls in important roles that are usually given to white characters.

Quotations: "Nigeria is my muse. The idea of the world being a magical place, a mystical place, is normal there."

"Writing and being a mother are a part of me, so they are mixed together and balance each other out."

"Silence is the best answer to a fool."

"We cried and sobbed and wept and bled tears. But when we were finished, all we could do was continue living."

"Having curiosity is the only way to learn."

"Here’s something scary: If you don’t recognize yourself, then who is the one who reminds you of who you are?"

"There was always so much I didn't know, but not knowing was part of it all."

"I love and am terrified of the water, particularly the ocean."

Personality

When Nnedi Okorafor was 19 she had back surgery for scoliosis and woke up paralyzed from the waist down. Imprisoned in her own body and terrified, she started writing short stories to keep her mind occupied. She recovered over the summer, and when she returned to college, she took a creative writing class.

Raised in the southern suburbs of Chicago, where she and her sisters would be called names and chased by skinheads, Okorafor grew up feeling like an outsider. She has, however, turned that perspective to her advantage.

Quotes from others about the person

• "Okorafor's genius has been to find the iconic images and traditions of African culture, mostly Nigerian and often Igbo, and tweak them just enough to become a seamless part of her vocabulary of fantastika." - Gary K. Wolfe

Connections

Nnedi Okorafor is married and has a child.

Daughter:

Anyaugo Okorafor