Chigozie Obioma was born in Akure, Nigeria. His two novels, The Fishermen (2015) and An Orchestra of Minorities (2019) were finalists for The Booker Prize and have been translated into 30 languages. He has won an LA Times book prize, the Internationaler Literaturpris, FT/Oppenheimer prize for fiction, an NAACP Image award and has been nominated for two dozen prizes for fiction. He was named one of Foreign Policy’s 100 Leading Global Thinkers in 2015 and a 100 Most Influential Africans list by NewAfrican Magazine in 2015 and 2024. He served as a judge of the Booker prize in 2021. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Guardian, Financial Times, Paris Review, Granta, and elsewhere. His third novel, The Road to the Country, published in 2024 was longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize for fiction, the Dublin prize for fiction, and was named a best book of the year by The Economist, Boston Globe, amongst others. He is the Helen S. Lanier Professor of Creative Writing and English at the University of Georgia and the program director of the Oxbelly Fiction Writers retreat.