Chinụa Ezenwa-Ọhaeto is a Nigerian poet and academic. He is the author of ''The Teenager Who Became My Mother,'' published in 2017''.''

Early life and education

Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto was born in Awka,

Anambra State Anambra State is a Nigerian state, located in the southeastern region of the country. The state was created on August 27, 1991. Anambra state is bounded by Delta State to the west, Imo State to the south, Enugu State to the east and Kogi State ...

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

University of Nebraska–Lincoln The University of Nebraska–Lincoln (Nebraska, NU, or UNL) is a public land-grant research university in Lincoln, Nebraska. Chartered in 1869 by the Nebraska Legislature as part of the Morrill Act of 1862, the school was known as the Universit ...

Career

In 2009, Chinua won the ANA/Mazariyya Teen Poetry Prize as a freshman at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka. He was a runner-up in 2014 for the

Etisalat Prize for Literature The 9mobile Prize for Literature (formerly the Etisalat Prize for Literature 2013–16) was created by Etisalat Nigeria in 2013, and is the first ever pan-African prize celebrating first-time African writers of published fiction books.

, flash fiction category. In 2017, he published a chapbook, ''The Teenager Who Became My Mother'', via Sevhage Publishers. In 2018, he won the Castello di Duino Poesia Prize for an unpublished poem and was the recipient of the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 The New Hampshire Institute of Art (NHIA) was a private art school in Manchester, New Hampshire. It was accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD) and the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) a ...

's 2018 Writing Award, as well as the recipient of a scholarship to the institute's MFA program, though he could not attend due to financial constraints. In 2019, he was the winner of the Sevhage/Angus Poetry Prize and second runner-up in the fifth Singapore Poetry Contest.

Bibliography

Chapbooks * ''The Teenager Who Became My Mother''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ezenwa-Ohaeto, Chinua 1992 births Living people 21st-century Nigerian poets Nigerian academics Nigerian male poets University of Nigeria alumni