“If you don’t understand, ask questions. If you’re uncomfortable about asking questions, say you are uncomfortable about asking questions and then ask anyway. It’s easy to tell when a question is coming from a good place. Then listen some more. Sometimes people just want to feel heard. Here’s to possibilities of friendship and connection and understanding.”

—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a nonfiction essayist, a novelist, poet, playwright, and a short story writer. Born in Nigeria, Adichie studied medicine and pharmacy at the University of Nigeria for a year and a half before coming to America to study communication and political science (from Drexel University and Eastern Connecticut State University); she later received her master’s degree in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University.

Some of her more well-known works include Americanah, The Thing Around Your Neck, Half of a Yellow Sun, Purple Hibiscus, and We Should All Be Feminists. Adichie has hosted TED talks and had her work featured in The New Yorker, Granta, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. She’s also racked up many awards and honors, including winning the New York Times Notable Book, People and Black Issues Book Review’s Best Book of the Year, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and The Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Fiction.