NCWN

Award-winning author and essayist Chimimanda Adichie will discuss the relationship between literature and human rights. Born in Nigeria, Adichie attended College in the United States, where she graduated summa cum laude from Eastern Connecticut State, and received a Masters degree in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins and a Masters degree in African Studies from Yale. Her Nigerian background sets the stage for her work, which explores the pressures of history and society on ethics and human identity. Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus, won the Commonwealth Writer's Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, as well as being long-listed for the Booker Prize. Her second book, Half of a Yellow Sun, recreates Biafra's impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria, and was awarded the Orange Prize. Adichie was recently selected by the New Yorker as one of the 20 under 40 most exciting writers.