Conference on "Literature, Power and the Academy"

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the author of hugely influential novels, short stories, poems, and essays. Her innovative writing style subtly combines English with the Igbo language of Nigeria, where she was born. She is celebrated for her political and feminist commentary, both in stories through which she tackles cultural and racial issues, and in her essays, lectures, and globally popular online TED talks. In this year of women's strikes and reflection on equal opportunities, she will address, in public conversation, questions about feminism and race, and the role literature can play in creating freer, fairer societies.

Born and raised in Nigeria, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie moved to the US to study at Eastern Connecticut State University, and Johns Hopkins: she then held prestigious Fellowships at Princeton, Yale and Harvard. During these years she published poetry, plays, and her novels Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun, and the story collection The Thing Around Your Neck: she was nominated for numerous awards including the Booker Prize, and won the O. Henry short story award, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for best first book, and the Orange Prize for Fiction. In 2009, she presented her argument for the importance of story-telling, 'The Danger of a Single Story', which became one of thetop ten most-viewed TED Talks of all time. Her 2013 novel Americanah was listed as one of the ten most important books of the year in both the UK and the US. In 2014, her talk 'We Should All be Feminists', which had initiated a global conversation, was published as an essay: Time magazine named her in 2015 as one of the 100 Most Influential People of the Year. In 2017 her bestselling Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, offered wise and inspiring advice on how to raised a new generation of feminists.

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