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Artist
Nnedi Okorafor (full name: Nnedimma Nkemdili Okorafor (previously known as Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu) is a Nigerian-American writer of fantasy, science fiction, and speculative fiction. The American-born daughter of Igbo Nigerian parents, she has been visiting Nigeria since she was very young. Her novels and stories reflect both her West African heritage and her American life. Okorafor is a 2001 graduate of the Clarion Writers Workshop in Lansing, Michigan, and holds a PhD in English from the University of Illinois, Chicago. She is a professor of creative writing at Chicago State University and lives with her family in Illinois. Okorafor received a 2001 Hurston-Wright literary award for her story "Amphibious Green." She then published two acclaimed books for young adults, The Shadow Speaker (Hyperion/Disney Book Group) and Zahrah the Windseeker (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Zahrah won the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa. It was also shortlisted for the 2005 Carl Brandon Parallax and Kindred Awards and a finalist for the Garden State Teen Book Award and the Golden Duck Award. The Shadow Speaker was a winner of the Carl Brandon Parallax Award, a Booksense Pick for Winter 2007/2008, a Tiptree Honor Book, a finalist for the Essence Magazine Literary Award, the Andre Norton Award and the Golden Duck Award and an NAACP Image Award nominee. Okorafor's children's book Long Juju Man was the 2007–08 winner of the Macmillan Writer's Prize for Africa. Okorafor's first adult nov