Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

While she was growing up, her father James Nwoye Adichie (1932–2020) worked as a professor of statistics at the University of Nigeria.

Her mother Grace Ifeoma (1942–2021), was the university's first female registrar.

They lived in a house on campus previously occupied by Chinua Achebe.

The family lost almost everything during the Nigerian Civil War, including both her maternal and paternal grandfathers.

Adichie completed her secondary education at the University of Nigeria Secondary School, Nsukka, where she received several academic prizes.

She studied medicine and pharmacy at the University of Nigeria 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 19, Adichie left Nigeria for the United States to study communications and political science at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

According to her, She transferred to Eastern Connecticut State University (ECSU) so as to be near her sister Uche, who had a medical practice in Coventry, Connecticut.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (born 15 September 1977) is a Nigerian writer whose works include novels, short stories and nonfiction.

Adichie was born on 15 September 1977 in the city of Enugu in Nigeria.

She is a native of Abba a locality in Njikoka, Anambra State.

She is the fifth of six children in an Igbo family and was raised in the university town of Nsukka, Enugu State.

Adichie has said of Buchi Emecheta's Destination Biafra (1982): "[It] was very important for my research when I was writing Half of a Yellow Sun."

Adichie published Decisions, a collection of poems in 1997 and For Love of Biafra, a play in 1998, using the pen name Amanda N. Adichie.

Her short story "My Mother, the Crazy African" according to Adichie was a story dating from when she was a college senior living in Connecticut, discusses the problems that arise when a person is facing two cultures that are complete opposites from each other.

Adichie also has published stories in Zoetrope: All-Story, and Topic Magazine.

She received a bachelor's degree from ECSU, summa cum laude, in 2001.

In 2002, she was shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story "You in America", and her story "That Harmattan Morning" was selected as a joint winner of the 2002 BBC World Service Short Story Awards.

Adichie is the author of eight books which includes; Purple Hibiscus (2003), Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), Americanah (2013), We Should All Be Feminists (2014), Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions (2017), Notes on Grief (2021) and Mama's Sleeping Scarf (2023).

In 2003, she won the David T. Wong International Short Story Prize 2002/2003 (PEN Center Award).

In 2003, Adichie completed a master's degree in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University.

Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003) received international critical acclaim; it was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction (2004) and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book (2005).

Adichie was a Hodder fellow at Princeton University during the 2005–2006 academic year.

Her second novel Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), named after the flag of the short-lived nation of Biafra, is set before and during the Nigerian Civil War.

Adichie's grandfather reportedly died in a refugee camp during the war and she has said that her book was a tribute to him.

Half of a Yellow Sun received the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.

In 2008, she was awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant.

In 2008, she received a Master of Arts degree in African studies from Yale University.

Also in 2008, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.

In 2008, she published a short story called "A Private Experience" in which two women from different cultures learn to understand each other in the middle of a crisis.

Adichie's third book, The Thing Around Your Neck (2009), is a collection of 12 stories that explore the relationships between men and women, parents and children, Africa and the United States.

She was awarded a 2011–2012 fellowship by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.

Adichie has been awarded sixteen honorary doctorate degrees from universities including Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Edinburgh, Duke University, Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins University, and the Catholic University of Louvain, where she received her sixteenth in a ceremony on 28 April 2022.

Adichie's story "Ceiling" was included in the 2011 edition of The Best American Short Stories.

Her third novel, Americanah (2013), an exploration of a young Nigerian encountering race in America, was selected by The New York Times as one of "The 10 Best Books of 2013".

Half of a Yellow Sun was adapted into a film of the same title directed by Biyi Bandele, starring BAFTA award-winner and Academy Award nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor and BAFTA winner Thandiwe Newton, and was released in 2014.

In 2018, she was the recipient of the PEN Pinter Prize awarded by English PEN.

She was recognized as one of the BBC's 100 women of 2021.

In November 2020, Half of a Yellow Sun was voted by the public to be the best book to have won the Women's Prize for Fiction in its 25-year history.