Chinelo Okparanta
Fiction
Chinelo Okparanta received her BA in Secondary Education (French, English & Communications) from the Pennsylvania State University, her MA in English (17th & 18th Century British Literature, or The Restoration) from Rutgers University, and her MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Among other honors, she is the recipient of the Coral Lansbury Graduate Award for Academic Excellence at Rutgers University, and the Dean’s Graduate Fellowship at the University of Iowa. Her short stories are forthcoming in GRANTA, Conjunctions, and Subtropics. Her collection of stories, Tumors and Butterflies, and her first novel, Under the Udara Trees, are also forthcoming. She has worked as a Sears sales associate, an English and French teacher at the middle and high school levels, an adjunct professor at the University of Iowa, a reader for NPR’s Three Minute Fiction Contest, and an editorial assistant for The Iowa Review. She is currently working on her second novel. She is originally from Port-Harcourt, Nigeria.