Nnedi Okorafor
Okorafor received a 2001 Hurston-Wright literary award for her story "Amphibious Green."  She then published two books for young adults, The Shadow Speaker (Hyperion/Disney Book Group) and Zahrah the Windseeker (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Zahrah won the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa.  The Shadow Speaker was a winner of the Carl Brandon Parallax Award, a Booksense Pick for Winter 2007/2008, a Tiptree Honor Book, Okorafor's children's book Long Juju Man was the 2007–08 winner of the Macmillan Writer's Prize for Africa.