

Her second novel, The Shadow Speaker (2007), won the Carl Brandon Parallax Award. An illustrated version of the book, published in Nigeria in 2008, won the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in the same year. Okorafor’s first novel for the young adult audience Zahrah the Windseeker was published in 2005. In 2016, Okorafor became one of only four authors in the past 20 years to win both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award for Binti, the story of a mathematically gifted young African woman who must leave her family and customs to attend the galaxy’s most respected university. Her work that includes novels, novellas, essays, and short stories has won numerous prestigious awards. She is best known for world-building Afrofuturistic science fiction, post-apocalyptic fiction, and science fantasy. Okorafor’s writing style is compelling and descriptive, with themes of choice and powers of culture. After taking a course in creative writing at a friend’s suggestion, Okorafor began to imagine that she could become a writer. The only way I could stop myself from going mad was by writing stories.” Okorafor worked hard to restore the use of her legs, and was able to return to school, walking with a cane. I could either have gone mad in that hospital bed or found some way to keep myself from going mad. As she said in a 2016 interview, “I went from being the super athlete to being paralyzed within 24 hours. It was during her stay in the hospital that she discovered her talent for writing.

A change of course came at the age of 19, when Okorafor was paralyzed after undergoing surgery to correct scoliosis. Okorafor thought she’d become a professional athlete or, because of her love of insects, an entomologist. She was talented athlete who excelled at tennis and track. Okorafor did not grow up dreaming of becoming a writer. During her childhood, frequent trips to Nigeria exposed Okorafor to her extended Igbo family and she became familiar with Nigerian myths and culture. One of four children of Nigerian immigrants who moved to the United States in the late 1960s to pursue their education, Okorafor grew up in Chicago suburbs. Okorafor holds a BA in Rhetoric from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a master’s degree in Journalism from Michigan State University, a master’s degree and a PhD in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Okorafor’s books have generated a fan base that include others writing in the genre, such as Neil Gaiman and George R. A writer of fantasy, science fiction and speculative fiction for both children and adults, Okorafor’s novels and stories reflect her Nigerian heritage and her life in the United States. Nigerian-American writer Nnedimma Nkemdili Okorafor (formerly Okorafor-Mbachu) was born on in Cincinnati, Ohio.
