Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the author of the novels Purple Hibiscus, published by Algonquin Books in 2003; Half of a Yellow Sun, published by Knopf in 2006, winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction; Americanah, published by Knopf in 2013, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction; and Dream Count, published by Knopf in 2025. She is also the author of the short-story collection The Thing Around Your Neck, published by Knopf in 2009; and the book-length essays We Should All Be Feminists, published by Anchor in 2014; Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions, published by Knopf in 2017; and Notes on Grief, published by Knopf in 2021.

She was born in Enugu, Nigeria. Her academic training was at Drexel University and Eastern Connecticut State University with a master's degree in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins and a Master of Arts in African Studies from Yale. She is a MacArthur Fellow (2008) and has been awarded honorary degrees from Yale, Edinburgh, and other institutions.

Her mentor focus is fiction craft at long form. The specific work of building characters across a novel. The structural architecture of long-form narrative. The research work that grounds historical fiction. The slow line-level prose work that distinguishes literary fiction from adjacent forms. The decision-making about what to revise and what to leave in the long arc of a novel-in-progress.

Her secondary mentor focus is the writer's career across multiple forms — novel, short story, essay, lecture-as-published-work. The relationship between literary fiction and the broader public-platform work that the author has chosen to engage. The decisions about platform engagement that protect the time and concentration required for the novel-writing work. The agent and publisher relationships across a writer's career arc.

Mentees who book with Chimamanda come from three primary populations. First: novelists with at least one book-length manuscript in progress or published, seeking senior craft feedback. Second: African and African-diaspora writers across literary fiction looking for craft-and-career perspective from a senior peer. Third: established writers considering long-form fiction projects that draw on historical or political research.

Her style is direct and craft-attentive. She reads manuscript pages carefully and comes prepared with specific notes on character, prose, structure, and the long arc of the novel. She is generous on the craft work and economical on questions that do not center the writing itself.

Outside the direct fiction-writing work she delivers occasional public lectures, has run her Purple Hibiscus Trust Creative Writing Workshop in Lagos for emerging African writers, and contributes selectively to long-form essay and lecture publications. She is based primarily in Lagos and the United States.

She is a member of the Creative Arts and Media Circle network here as a senior member of the fiction-craft subgroup, and contributes to discussion threads on the long-form novel-writing topics. She is also active in the Continent-to-Diaspora Reverse Conversations network on the topics of African and African-diaspora literary production and the relationship between the two.

Sessions are 45 minutes. The pre-session brief is a manuscript sample (no more than thirty pages of fiction), a CV or summary of publication work to date, and a one-page document on the specific craft question or career decision. She reads the manuscript before the session. The session structure is craft-first. Mentees leave with detailed written notes on the manuscript and a specific action list.

Her novels across her broader corpus including Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun, Americanah, and Dream Count represent a sustained literary practice across two decades. Each novel has been received in African, African-diaspora, and broader international readership contexts.

Her book-length essays We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele have reached very broad readerships across multiple languages. The We Should All Be Feminists essay was originally a TEDx talk and was subsequently expanded into the book form. The interaction between lecture, essay, and broader public engagement across her career is part of what she discusses with mentees considering similar trajectories.

Her Purple Hibiscus Trust Creative Writing Workshop in Lagos has supported emerging African writers across multiple cohorts. The workshop work represents her institutional investment in the pipeline of African fiction writers. Mentees considering training-program founding or workshop-design work find her experience useful.

Her Notes on Grief memoir engages personal loss in a way that crosses between memoir, essay, and lyric writing. The form-mixing represents a deliberate craft choice. Mentees considering memoir projects on grief and loss find the book a useful reference.

Her lecture and public-conversation work across major literary and academic venues represents a selective engagement with the broader public platform. She is deliberate about which engagements to accept and which to decline. The discipline of that selectivity is part of what she discusses with mentees considering similar career decisions.

Her engagement in the platform's Creative Arts and Media Circle and the Continent-to-Diaspora Reverse Conversations network covers the range of her literary practice and her specific perspective on the African and African-diaspora literary-production conversations. Her contributions to discussion threads on the topics of long-form novel craft, research-grounded historical fiction, and the lecture-to-essay-to-book trajectory are valuable reference points for writers in the fiction subgroup specifically.

The creative-industries landscape continues to evolve in ways that affect Black women creators and creative-industries professionals specifically. The financing landscape for films, books, and adjacent creative-industries projects has shifted across the past decade. The platform landscape has shifted. The agent-and-publisher relationships have shifted. The mentor practice connects specifically to the senior-level craft questions and to the structural conditions that determine whether individual creative-industries careers progress at parity.

Sessions are 45 minutes. The pre-session brief is a manuscript sample (no more than thirty pages of fiction), a CV or summary of publication work to date, and a one-page document on the specific craft question or career decision. She reads the manuscript before the session. The session structure is craft-first.

Her engagement with both African and international literary-production contexts gives her specific perspective on the publication-decision-making for African writers considering either continental or international primary-publication pathways. The decision has implications for advance levels, distribution reach, and the long-arc reception of the work.

The mentor practice on this platform is part of a broader commitment to structured, professional mentorship for African and African-diaspora women across the long arc of their careers. The platform's session-management infrastructure — booking, calendaring, payment (where applicable), pre-session briefs, in-session notes, and post-session follow-up — is designed to support sustained mentor-mentee relationships across multiple sessions for mentees who benefit from that continuity. Mentees are welcome to book initial single sessions, structured multi-session engagements, or ongoing relationships across longer career arcs. The structure follows the work.