Nnedi Okorafor (www.nnedi.com) is a novelist of Nigerian descent who lives in the Chicago suburbs with her daughter; she is a professor of Creative Writing at Chicago State University. She is known for weaving African culture into creative evocative settings and memorable characters. In a profile of Nnedi’s work titled, “Weapons of Mass Creation,” The New York Times called Nnedi’s imagination “stunning.” Her novels include Who Fears Death (winner of the 2011 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel), Akata Witch Witch (a 2011 Amazon.com Best Book of the Year), Zahrah the Windseeker (winner of the Wole Soyinka Prize for African Literature), and The Shadow Speaker (winner of the Carl Brandon Society Parallax Award). She’s also written one children’s book titled Long Juju Man (winner of the Macmillan Writer’s Prize for Africa). Her chapter book, Iridessa and the Secret of the Never Mine (Disney Press), is scheduled for release in 2012.
“Wahala” was published in the original anthology Living on Mars, edited by Jonathan Strahan. Set in the Sahara desert in a post-apocalyptic future, local people, colonists, are returning in a ship from Mars, as if from the past. Several mutant humans await their arrival. The protagonist is a plucky telepathic teenage Nigerian girl reminiscent of characters in Zenna Henderson’s stories of The People.