Uzodinma Iweala

Uzodinma Iweala (born November 5, 1982) is an author and physician who hails from Nigeria. His debut novel, Beasts of No Nation, is a formation of his thesis work (in creative writing) at Harvard. It depicts a child soldier in an unnamed African country. The book, published in 2005 and adapted as an award-winning film in 2015, was mentioned by Time Magazine, The New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, The Times, and Rolling Stone.

Family and education

The son of Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Iweala attended St. Albans School in Washington D.C. and later Harvard College with an A.B., magna cum laude, in English and American Literature and Language, in 2004. While at Harvard, Iweala earned the Hoopes Prize and Dorothy Hicks Lee Prize for Outstanding Undergraduate Thesis, 2004; Eager Prize for Best Undergraduate Short Story, 2003; and the Horman Prize for Excellence in Creative Writing, 2003. He graduated from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 2011 and is currently a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.

Writing awards

In 2006, he won the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award. In 2007, he was named as one of Granta magazine's 20 best young American novelists.