Chinelo Okparanta

Born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, Chinelo Okparanta earned her B.Sc. from the Pennsylvania State University, her M.A. from Rutgers University, and her M.F.A from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She was featured as one of GRANTA magazine’s six new voices for 2012, and in May 2013 her collection of short stories entitled Happiness, Like Water was published in the UK. Happiness, Like Water is forthcoming in the US by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in August 2013. Okparanta has been nominated for a United States Artists Fellowship in Literature and long-listed for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. She currently teaches at Colgate University in the US, where she is Olive B. O’Connor Fellow in Fiction. Photo Credit Marcia Wilson WideVision Photography