Chinelo Okparanta was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, and has stories in or forthcoming from in Granta, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, AGNI, The Iowa Review, Conjunctions, Subtropics, and The Coffin Factory. Her collection of short stories entitled Happiness, Like Water is forthcoming from Granta Books in the U.K. and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the U.S., and will be followed shortly by her debut novel, tentatively entitled Under the Udala Trees. She has taught creative writing at the University of Iowa, where she was awarded a Dean ‘s Fellowship. In 2012, she served as the Provost’s Visiting Writer in Fiction at the University of Iowa. Also in 2012, she was nominated for the United States Artists Fellowship in Literature. She is currently Olive B. O’Connor Fellow in Fiction at Colgate University. (updated 5/2013)