Chimamanda Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was born on September 15th, 1977 in Enugu, Nigeria as the fifth of six children to Igbo parents; James Nwoye Adichie and Grace Ifeoma. 

Chimamanda Adichie Age

Chimamanda Adichie is 47 years old.

Chimamanda Adichie Early Life

While her family's ancestral hometown is Abba, Njikoka local government area of Anambra State, Chimamanda grew up in Nsukka, in the house formerly occupied by Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe. Chimamanda's father, who is now retired, worked at the University of Nigeria, located in Nsukka. He was Nigeria's first professor of statistics, and later became Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University. Her mother was the first female registrar at the same institution.

Chimamanda completed her secondary education at the University's school, receiving several academic prizes. She went on to study 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 nineteen, Chimamanda left for the United States. She gained a scholarship to study communication at Drexel University in Philadelphia for two years, and she went on to pursue a degree in communication and political science at Eastern Connecticut State University, where she also wrote articles for the university journal, the Campus Lantern. While in Connecticut, she stayed with her sister Ijeoma, who ran a medical practice close to the university. She graduated summa cum laude from Eastern in 2001, and then completed a master's degree in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.

Chimamanda Adichie Career

During her senior year at Eastern that Chimamanda started working on her first novel, Purple Hibiscus, which was released in October 2003. The book has received wide critical acclaim: it was shortlisted for the Orange Fiction Prize (2004) and was awarded the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book (2005). Her second novel, Half of a Yellow Sun (also the title of one of her short stories), is set before and during the Biafran War. It was published in August 2006 in the United Kingdom and in September 2006 in the United States. Like Purple Hibiscus, it has also been released in Nigeria.

Chimamanda was a Hodder fellow at Princeton University during the 2005-2006 academic year, and earned an MA in African Studies from Yale University in 2008. Harvard University allowed her to finalize her third novel, Americanah which was released to great critical acclaim in 2013.

Adichie has been invited to speak around the world. Her 2009 TED Talk, The Danger of A Single Story, is now one of the most-viewed TED Talks of all time. Her 2012 talk, We Should All Be Feminists, has a started a worldwide conversation about feminism, and was published as a book in 2014. Her most recent book, Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, was published in March 2017.

Chimamanda Adichie Personal Life

Chimamanda is married to Ivara Esege, a medical doctor, and has a daughter. She divides her time between Nigeria, where she regularly teaches writing workshops, and the United States. In April 2018, Adichie revealed that she was molested at the age of 17. She narrated how a ‘big man in the media’ slipped his hand under her clothes and then into her bra to squeeze her breasts when she was 17 years old.

Chimamanda Adichie Awards

In 2012, she was awarded a fellowship by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. She has won other numerous awards including Women's Prize for Fiction (in 2007 for Half of a Yellow Sun), PEN/Open Book (in 2007 also for Half of a Yellow Sun), MacArthur Fellowship (2008), National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction (2014), and Shorty Award for Literature (2018). ·

Chimamanda Adichie Net Worth

Her net worth is not available.

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