Teju Cole
Teju Cole is a Nigerian-American author, photographer, and art historian who was born on June 27, 1975. His writing has “created a new path in African literature,” according to critics who have complimented it. He returned to the United States, where he was born, in 1992. He currently resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he has the title of Gore Vidal Professor of the Practice of Creative Writing at Harvard University. His books have been named among Time magazine’s “Best Books of the Year,” and Christine Richter-translation Nilsson’s of Open City into German won the International Literature Award.
Helon Habila
Helon Habila is a Professor of Creative Writing at George Mason University. He was born in Nigeria where he worked as a journalist before moving to England, and then to the US. He is the author of three novels: Waiting for an Angel (2002), Measuring Time (2007), and Oil on Water (2010).His most recent book is The Chibok Girls (2016). Habila’s work has won many awards including the Caine Prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa Region), The Virginia Library Prize for Fiction , and the Windham-Campbell Prize, among many others. Helon Habila lives in Virginia with his family.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a Nigerian author who was born on September 15, 1977, has written novels, short tales, and nonfiction. She was referred to as “the most prominent” of a “procession of critically praised young Anglophone authors” in The Times Literary Supplement. Adichie, who emigrated to the United States from Nigeria at the age of 19, was named one of the Top 100 Most Influential Africans in 2019 by New African magazine. Adichie was also elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in March 2017, making her the second Nigerian to receive this honor after Prof. Wole Soyinka. Adichie lives in the United States but visit Nigeria most of the time, where she teaches writing workshops.
Sefi Atta
Sefi Atta, a Nigerian-American author of novels, short stories, plays, and screenplays, was born in January 1964. She moved to the UK in the 1980s before moving to the USA, where she began writing. Her works have been translated into numerous languages, the BBC has broadcast radio plays of hers, and stage productions of her plays have been seen all over the world. Among the honors she has received are the 2009 Noma Award for Publishing in Africa and the 2006 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa. She is also a guest writer at the French university Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon.
Promoting African Cultural Heritage
These Nigerian Emigrant writers—like Ben Okri, Helon Habila, Sefi Atta, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Teju Cole, and Chris Abani—offer fresh insights into the reality and myths of Nigeria and Africa in their literary works, tackling the complex issues of race and national identity.