Nnedi Okorafor

Nnedi Okorafor (full name: Nnedimma Nkemdili Okorafor; also known as Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu; born April 8, 1974) is a Nigerian-American writer. She writes fantasy and science fiction.
Background and personal life.
Okrafor was born in the United States. Her parents are members of the Igbo group from Nigeria. She has visited Nigeria many times since she was very young. While she studied Homewood-Flossmoor High School in Flossmoor, Ill., Okorafor was a good tennis player and did very well studying science. Later, she found out she had scoliosis. This condition and surgery to fix it ended Okorafor's student athletic career. It made it difficult for her to walk. She started writing as a hobby while she recovered from surgery. Her novels and stories show both her West African life and her American life. In 2001 Okorafor graduated of the Clarion Writers Workshop in Lansing, Michigan. She earned a PhD in English from the University of Illinois, Chicago. She is an associate professor of creative writing and literature at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). She lives in both Buffalo and Olympia Fields, Illinois with her family.
Writing and awards.
Okorafor received a 2001 Hurston-Wright literary award for her story "Amphibious Green." She then published two books for young adults, "The Shadow Speaker" (Hyperion/Disney Book Group) and "Zahrah the Windseeker" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). "Zahrah" won the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa. "The Shadow Speaker" was a winner of the Carl Brandon Parallax Award, a Booksense Pick for Winter 2007/2008, a Tiptree Honor Book, Okorafor's children's book "Long Juju Man" was the 2007–08 winner of the Macmillan Writer's Prize for Africa.
Okorafor's first novel for adults, "Who Fears Death" (DAW/Penguin Books), won the 2011 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, was a 2011 Tiptree Honor Book and was nominated for the 2010 Nebula Award.
Okorafor's short stories have been published in books and magazines, including "Dark Matter: Reading The Bones", "Strange Horizons", "Moondance" magazine, and "Writers of the Future" Volume XVIII. A collection of her stories, called "Kabu Kabu", was published by Prime Books in 2013. It includes the story "Kabu Kabu" that she wrote with Alan Dean Foster. Whoopi Goldberg wrote the foreword to the book.
Writing.
Young Adult—writing as Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu 
Children— writing as Nnedi Okorafor
Young Adult—writing as Nnedi Okorafor
Adult—writing as Nnedi Okorafor