Nigerian-born writer Chika Unigwe will offer a reading as part of this year’s Mary E. Rolling Reading Series. The reading, which is free and open to the public, will take place at 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, November 2, in Paterno Library’s Foster Auditorium on the University Park campus.

Chika Unigwe has published four novels, including “On Black Sisters’ Street” (2011), which won the NLNG Prize for Literature worth $100,000; “De Zwarte Messias” (2014), a fictional rendition of the Nigerian memoirist Olaudah Equiano’s life; and a short story collection, “Better Never than Late” (2019). Her latest novel, “The Middle Daughter,” was published by Dzanc Books in April 2023. Her work has been widely translated.

Unigwe is currently a Professor at Georgia College, where she teaches in their MFA in Creative Writing program. She has served as Creative Director of the Awele Creative Trust, as a judge for the Man Booker International Prize (in 2016), and as Bonderman Professor of Creative Writing at Brown University (in 2016-17). She has been the recipient of many fellowships and has earned numerous awards for her writing. Most notably, she won the 2003 BBC Short Story Competition for the short story “Borrowed Smile,” and was nominated for the 2004 Caine Prize for African Writing for the short story “The Secret.” She writes a weekly column for the Nigerian Daily Trust.

About Unigwe’s latest novel, “The Middle Daughter,” Nigerian novelist Helon Habila observes: “Chika Unigwe’s modern retelling of the myth of Hades and Persephone is pitch perfect—it is a meditation on the need we all share for belonging, and family, and love; a commentary on the journey we must all take in search of freedom.”

(author photo credit:  Misan Harriman)