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The Library of Congress > Poetry & Literature > Conversations with African Poets and Writers > Chinelo Okparanta
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Nigerian-American Writer Chinelo Okparanta

Conversations with African Poets and Writers, The Poetry and Literature Center at the Library of Congress

TITLE: Conversations with African Poets and Writers, Chinelo Okparanta

SPEAKER: Chinelo Okparanta
EVENT DATE: 2015/02/03
RUNNING TIME: 59 minutes
TRANSCRIPT: View Transcript (link will open in a new window)

DESCRIPTION: Chinelo Okparanta read selections from her work and participated in a moderated discussion. Chinelo Okparanta was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. A University of Iowa Provost's Postgraduate Visiting Writer in Fiction as well as a Colgate University Olive B. O'Connor Fellow in Fiction, Okparanta received her BS from Pennsylvania State University, her MA from Rutgers University, and her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She was one of Granta's six New Voices for 2012 and is a Lambda Award winner for Lesbian Fiction, an O. Henry Short Story Prize winner, a finalist for the Rolex Mentors and Proteges Arts Initiative, a finalist for the Etisalat Prize for Literature, and a finalist for the Caine Prize, among others. Her stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Granta, Tin House, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere.