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Uche Okonkwo

Biography

Uche Okonkwo

Uche Okonkwo’s stories have been published in A Public Space, One Story, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, THE BEST AMERICAN NONREQUIRED READING 2019 and LAGOS NOIR, among others. A former Bernard O’Keefe Scholar at Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and resident at Art Omi, she is a recipient of the George Bennett Fellowship at Phillips Exeter Academy and a Steinbeck Fellowship. Okonkwo grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, and is currently pursuing a creative writing PhD at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Uche Okonkwo

Books by Uche Okonkwo

by Uche Okonkwo - Fiction, Short Stories

A teenage girl from a poor family is dazzled by her rich, vivacious friend. But as the friend’s behavior grows unstable and dangerous, she must decide whether to cover for her or risk telling the truth to get her the help she needs. A young woman and her mother bask in the envy of their neighbors when the woman receives an offer of marriage from the family of a doctor living in Belgium --- though when the offer fails to materialize, that envy threatens to turn vicious. And a lonely daughter finds herself wandering a village in eastern Nigeria in an ill-fated quest, struggling to come to terms with her mother’s mental illness. Set in contemporary Nigeria, the 10 stories in A KIND OF MADNESS unravel the tensions between mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, best friends, siblings and more.