The Institute for Diversity in the Arts (IDA) welcomes award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor in conversation with 2023 IDA Visiting Artist Ellen Sebastian Chang, in person at the Stanford Humanities Center.
Nnedi’s works include WHO FEARS DEATH (in development at HBO into a TV series), the BINTI novella trilogy (optioned and in development with Media Res), THE BOOK OF PHOENIX, the NSIBIDI SCRIPTS SERIES and LAGOON. She is the winner of Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Locus and Lodestar Awards and her debut novel ZAHRAH THE WINDSEEKER won the prestigious Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature.
Nnedi has also written an Africanfuturist comic series LAGUARDIA (winner of the Hugo and Eisner Award); comics for Marvel, including BLACK PANTHER: LONG LIVE THE KING and WAKANDA FOREVER (featuring the Dora Milaje) and the SHURI series; and her short memoir BROKEN PLACES AND OUTER SPACES.
Nnedi holds a PhD (literature) and two MAs (journalism and literature). She lives with her daughter Anyaugo and family in Phoenix, Arizona.
Nnedi will be joined in Conversation by IDA Visiting Artist Ellen Sebastian Chang.
Ellen Sebastian Chang is a director and writer. Through her art practices, she advocates for human rights as in her Creative Capital project, House/Full that documents sex trafficking in Oakland. Sebastian Chang was co-founder and artistic director of LIFE ON THE WATER, a national and internationally known presenting and producing organization at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center from 1986 through 1995. In 2015 she collaborated with artist Maya Gurantz to create A Hole in Space (Oakland Redux), an underground public art project. Her 1982 directorial/ writing debut Your Place Is No Longer With Us created in a Victorian mansion, served to the audience a meal of black-eyed peas, mustard greens and cornbread at the performance’s end. Amid work on her artistic practice, she owned and operated FuseBOX Restaurant in West Oakland until 2017 when the restaurant closed.
