Nnedi Okorafor with authors Kevin J. Anderson (left) and Doug Beason (right).

         Nnedi Okorafor is a writer and journalist.  A graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop (2001), she is the third place winner of the 2001 Hurston/Wright Awards, (the Hurston/Wright Foundation is supported by many established authors including Tony Morrison, John Grisham and Maya Angelou) for her story Amphibious Green.

          Nnedi also received honorable mention in The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror (2000) for her short story "The Palm Tree Bandit," originally published in Strange Horizons.  Her short stories have also appeared in: The Margin Anthology of Magical Realism, The Witching Hour Anthology, and Lamhfada Magazine of Myth and Folklore.  She cites Ben Okri, Octavia Butler, Salman Rushdie and Amos Tutuolo as her most influential authors.

          More a novelist than a short story writer, Okorafor is working on three novels, Arro-yo the Windseeker, Bush Radio and a young adult novel called Zahrah the Windseeker.  Okorafor is a Ph.D. student in English at the University of Illinois, Chicago, a writer of Africana.com, and a technology columnist for the Star Newspaper.