Chinelo Okparanta was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. She received her BS from Pennsylvania State University, her MA from Rutgers University, and her MFA from Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she served as a Provost’s Postgraduate Visiting Writer. She is the author of ‘America’ (2012), which was shortlisted for the 2013 Caine Prize for African Writing. She has been nominated for a United States Artists Fellowship in Literature, and her collection of short stories, Happiness, Like Water (2013) was long-listed for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.