I Do Not Come to You by Chance

Adaobi Tricia Obinne Nwaubani is a novelist, journalist, essayist and humorist. She was born in Enugu, Nigeria and lives in Abuja, Nigeria. As a teenager, she secretly dreamed of becoming a CIA or KGB agent. She studied Psychology at the University of Ibadan. Her first income was from winning a writing competition at the age of 13.

Her debut novel, I Do Not Come to You by Chance, won the 2010 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book (Africa), a 2010 Betty Trask First Book award, and was named by the Washington Post as one of the Best Books of the Year. Her debut Young Adult novel, Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree, based on interviews with girls kidnapped by Boko Haram, was published in 2018. It won the 2018 Raven Award for Excellence in Arts and Entertainment, was named as one of the American Library Association’s Best Fiction for Young Adults, and is a Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People 2019 selection.

Nwaubani’s journalism focuses on under-reported humanitarian issues. Her reportage and essays have appeared in scores of publications, including The New Yorker, the New York Times, and The Guardian. She writes a monthly column for the BBC’s ‘Letter from Africa’, also broadcast on the Focus on Africa radio programme. She was a location producer for the BBC/HBO documentary feature film, ‘Stolen Daughters: Kidnapped by Boko Haram’. In 2017, Nwaubani was selected as a fellow for the Ford Foundation’s inaugural Africa ♯NoFilter project, a movement for promoting a diversity of narratives from across the African continent.