Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto

Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto was born in 1992 in Awka, Anambra State, where his father Ezenwa-Ohaeto taught at Nnamdi Azikiwe University.[1] He grew up between Germany and Nigeria due to his father's profession.[1] He was named after Chinua Achebe,[1] who was his father's mentor.[2] While growing up, Ezenwa-Ohaeto envisioned becoming an inventor but changed his mind when he started reading his father's poems.[1] He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in English Language and Literature at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.[1][3] He is currently a PhD student for Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.[3]

In 2009, Chinua won the ANA/Mazariyya Teen Poetry Prize as a freshman at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka.[1] He was a runner-up in 2014 for the Etisalat Prize for Literature, flash fiction category.[3] In 2017, he published a chapbook, The Teenager Who Became My Mother, via Sevhage Publishers.[4] In 2018, he won the Castello di Duino Poesia Prize for an unpublished poem and was the recipient of the New Hampshire Institute of Art's 2018 Writing Award,[5] as well as the recipient of a scholarship to the institute's MFA program,[3][1] though he could not attend due to financial constraints.[1] In 2019, he was the winner of the Sevhage/Angus Poetry Prize and second runner-up in the fifth Singapore Poetry Contest.[3]

Chapbooks

• The Teenager Who Became My Mother